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capricornsicle · 4 years

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The Teen Wolf writers and producers (including Tyler Posey) got rid of Kira and treated Arden like trash because, quoting Posey’s and Jeff’s own words: “Kira’s a good distraction for Scott” AND “Scott was relying on Kira too much, so it’s a good thing for him to have one less thing to worry about” AND “Kira’s rise in powers we’re becoming a problem for Scott”. Even during the virtual Teen Wolf reunion, Posey would rather talk about “the naked ladies” than acknowledge he did Arden/Kira dirty.

Was there a question in there? Either way, I have plenty to say on this topic, and if you’re on my blog you’re going to hear it one way or another. It’s already in all the tags of Kira-related posts, where I store my tea. Keeping tea in hot places spoils it much quicker. (Those of you who don’t want to read the whole post, skip to the end for the bolded TL;DR section.)

Are you quoting Tyler Posey or Jeff Davis? If we’re going to talk about producers let’s talk about them individually and not lump them together as a singular unit. The same job title does not make them the same person, and different job titles definitely doesn’t.

(Small digression: Tyler Posey is colloquially referred to by fans and on set as “T. Posey” or simply “Posey”, because he shares a name with another main actor, Tyler Hoechlin (Derek Hale). Typically sets and TV panels use first names to refer to everyone on them, but abbreviate for clarity and space. Now, I don’t intend to speculate on the asker’s conscious or subconscious intentions, and in fact I doubt it comes to mind for a lot of fans, but referring to one person in a group of people all addressed by first name by their last name is impersonal and typically lends itself to passing harsher judgement on the person referred to by last name.

Recall how many lawyers will address their own defendant by first name, but prosecutors will address the defendant by last name. Advice I once received in a debate class from an excellent teacher and coach was this: “Your job is not to tell your analysis of facts to the audience. They probably don’t care. Your job is to tell them a story that gets them to think of you and your side as good ol’ Abes and Ems and your opponent as Mr. Smith. As soon as you do that, the jury will vote in your favor.”

The same is true of arguments and debate points made by fans on Tumblr, believe it or not. Whether intentional or not, referring to someone by their last name allows one to detach the person from their person-ness and treat them like a character we never got close to. This is treatment both Tyler Posey, an actor and real person, and Monroe, Deaton, Morrell, and others, fictional characters, receive. Notice that all of these people are non-white. Let’s not detach ourselves from people of color that hard, but I’ve digressed, so back to the topic at hand.)

Anywhom. Kira and Arden.

Their treatment on both ends was unfair. Kira appeared less in a season where she made title sequence than one where she was a supporting character, despite Scira being the only straight couple on television that didn’t make everyone get up for snacks during their scenes. Or maybe just me. Either way, Kira was written off the show for vague and mysterious reasons, like “the cast was getting too big” (then why not write off one of the many white male supporting characters with little to no character development instead of a main character? why did Peter keep being there is the real question) or “Kira couldn’t control her powers”.

What actually happened is that Kira killed someone and struggled with violent, murder-y impulses. Other characters who have done this include but are not limited to: Scott, Liam, Theo, Peter, Satomi, Boyd, Erica, and Cora. Several of them died, Erica and Cora were written off because their actors had other jobs, but none of them were branded as murderous monsters. Two of them maintained title sequence status through 6b, and Peter and Theo both made it through as supporting characters.

There was no real reason for Kira’s violent tendencies to be a deal-breaker for Scooby Gang status. But despite the odd reactions from characters, Kira went off to the Skinwalkers (an entire separate essay) to “control her power”, but ended up staying with them after going back and forth a bit to finish up s5. Fans were given very little to go on about Kira’s sudden departure, but it was pretty clear when it was announced in 2016 that she wasn’t returning for s6 that Arden Cho had been fired.

Now let’s talk about backstage.

It was common practice for characters of color who weren’t white-passing to have small roles and get killed off much more frequently than white and passing characters. Case(s) in point: Boyd and Kali vs. Isaac and Deucalion. However, this was usually excused because of the minor and supporting roles played by characters of color -- those characters could come back, but they weren’t expected to, so they only needed to be written in for a season or two, and if they died or left it wasn’t out of left field. The bias against characters of color was definitely there, but less noticeable to many viewers.

Kira was an exceptional character (exception to the rules and excellent character) of color who made the title sequence. Other characters who have done this are Scott McCall (who’s apparently white-passing to a lot of fans) for all seasons and Melissa McCall with the other parents in 6b. There’s no other way to go about it: Arden Cho was written off sloppily to make room for white male characters and a white love interest for Scott. This is what a lot of people call “casual” racism, and while no racism is truly “casual” and all forms of it should be called out and punished, that’s for another time. Thank fuck I haven’t heard anyone blatantly calling Kira and her story “oriental”. (Yet.)

On the Scott/Tyler Posey end of things.

Let’s remember, though, that Scott McCall and Tyler Posey are not the same people. Their actions are largely independent of one another. Scott’s story arc and what happened to the characters around him was not the character Scott’s fault. That narrative was told by the writer/producer team, which we can all tell is predominantly white and male by the way Jeff Davis tweets and women and characters of color were written. Tyler Posey, who I must repeat is not Scott McCall, gained producer status in season 5 of Teen Wolf, which is Kira’s last season. A strange number of fans jump to the conclusion that Tyler P. is responsible for her sloppy write-off. There are several errors in critical thinking here.

Error 1: the assumption that Tyler Posey had the power to write a main character and co-star off the show.

Tyler P. was one producer of many, and while he did become an executive producer, that didn’t make him suddenly in charge of everything. An executive producer typically means someone who, actor or not, invested significant money in a creative project. Depending on the producer and project, they could do anything from donating with minimal involvement to getting hands-on with their creative vision. Tyler P. was a hands-on producer, obviously, because he was the star of the show.

However, new producers don’t get free reign to control the show’s entire narrative. Removing Kira, a title sequence character, from the show, was not a decision Tyler P. had the power to make all by his little Herculean self. He only directed a single episode of the whole show. The majority of producers on a show are writers, not actors, and the highest-ranking producer is the showrunner, one person who ultimately determines creative direction. On Teen Wolf, that was Jeff Davis. Not Tyler Posey.

Error 2: the assumption that Tyler Posey wrote for the show.

Producer is not a blanket term for “I can do anything to this show and no one can stop me”. Tyler P. didn’t write any episodes, and he only directed one. Jeff Davis was the head writer who had the power to control the narrative and make singlehanded and/or final decisions about characters. The writers’ room, or the list of producers you see credited, is more complicated than you might think.

On American television, almost all writers are credited as “producers”. Some are credited as “staff writers”, or writers who don’t typically produce entire episodes but who do a lot of small technical or “busy” work. Both producers and staff writers have contracts for their work, and few of the original members of the writing room stay on that show for its entire run. It’s a cutthroat business, and writers can be fired for a lot of reasons, whether for lack of ability to write a certain character or tone, executive interest in new team members, difference of creative opinion, pretty much anything.

Additionally, the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) requires a certain number of freelance writers to be hired for each season of American television shows, so all things together, there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen. All the writers who contribute to a certain episode are credited in that episode, but credits may also include writers and producers who didn’t write a single word of that episode’s script, or writers and producers no longer working for the show but who made significant contributions to the story before that may have led to that episode’s story.

In summary of this chunk, there were a lot of writers and producers who contributed to Kira’s send-off, and not all of them, even those credited, who were part of the writing room were responsible. Writers from 5a were not necessarily contributors to 5b, as is the tumultuous nature of television. But above all, Tyler Posey wasn’t a writer, just a producer. He didn’t sit evilly down at a typewriter and create the script that gave Kira a crappy ending, or any other episodes in s5 their weak writing. Whether or not his creative vision included his co-star getting fired isn’t something fans can speak confidently on.

Error 3: the assumption that Tyler Posey was the *only* possible source of the show’s racist tendencies.

This one is more complicated for a few reasons. Firstly, let me say that it is entirely possible for people of color to be discriminatory towards other people of color, especially those who are different from them. This is not technically called racism, because racism refers to white people in power benefiting from the oppression of people of color with historically less power. The other word that comes up in this case is “colorism”, discrimination based on skin color and the things associated with that color that’s often between people of the same race, but can refer to discrimination between various people of color.

However. Teen Wolf fans often believe that Tyler Posey is white, because he is “white-passing”, or a person of color who passes to the unknowing eye as a white person. He is actually Latino (the version of Latinx used for male and masculine people who prefer it -- Tyler P. has referred to himself as Latino in the past), half Mexican on his mother’s side, white on his dad’s. Teen Wolf has a long and not unsuspicious history of casting characters of color who are white-passing and treating them much more like white characters than characters of color. For example, Tyler Posey (Scott McCall) is Latino, Cody Christian (Theo Raeken) is Native American (specifically Penobscot), Froylan Gutierrez (Nolan Holloway) is Mexican and Caxcan Native, Kelsey Chow (Tracy Stewart) is Chinese and Cherokee, and the list goes on.

A lot of fans mistakenly identify these actors and characters as white, cue the posts from the initial Kira debacle where people were angry Theo came back and she didn’t, and while white-passing privilege definitely exists and deserves more recognition as a source of bias and inequality, there are a staggering number of fans accusing characters of color of the show’s racism and seemingly or actually absolving the actual white people producing the show of blame. I mean, seriously, have you seen Jeff Davis’s Twitter page? He radiates “I call all brown people Mexicans” energy. Jeff Davis certainly treated Arden Cho poorly at best, but where’s the evidence Tyler P. did? Maybe Tyler Posey does have some bias against Japanese or other East Asian people, but I’ve seen no evidence of that, and significant evidence that Jeff Davis, the showrunner, head writer, and head executive producer, has more than some bias against all people of color.

However you feel about Scott and Kira, race and racism are inarguably tied to their story. Let’s accuse the white men who tweet racist things of racism, and refrain from accusing people of color of being singlehandedly responsible for that racism, thanks.

Actually answering the “ask”.

In quotations because I’m yet to find a question in there. This fandom has a lot of strong opinions, and while it’s vastly a popular opinion to be rightly upset about Kira and Arden Cho’s treatment, the fandom is divided on Scott McCall and Tyler Posey. The main points of contention anti-Scott campers fall back on are the following:

Scott in season 5 is a bad friend to Stiles, the white boy a lot of fans project on and favor the most

Scott has little character development after season 3, widely regarded as the best season of the show

Tyler Posey has done some questionable things (fake coming out) and is held responsible for Stiles being a minimal presence in season 6 and Kira being written off the show

So that’s a bit to unpack, and this is already a long post. I’ll say this much.

(1) Season 5 was a messy, awkward season with terrible pacing and a weak plot. Way too much was happening at once, between Theo, the chimeras, the Dread Doctors, the Beast, Lydia in Eichen House, Parrish and his Hellhound powers, the Mason/Corey romance, the Liam/Hayden romance, Gerard coming back, Deucalion coming back, and fucksake I could go on. Bad season. No one got good characterization in that season, and the whole “Stiles killed Donovan” thing was ridiculous on all fronts. That Scott would react that way, that Stiles wouldn’t tell anyone, that Sheriff Stilinski would believe some random crying kid who showed up out of nowhere that his son’s a murderer, that Stiles reacted that way to killing a cannibalistic winter spirit trying to eat him in self-defense, hell, even Donovan’s death was underwhelming. This fandom chooses to focus only on the ridiculous characterization of the character of color who is by and far not the only person who overreacts to everything, and c’mon, Scott antis. Hate Sheriff Stilinski too or find a new talking point.

(2) Hardly any of the mains have character development after 3b. Stiles got less and less funny and witty (and relevant) after season 1, Lydia’s storyline fizzled out and she didn’t do anything outside of yell a lot, Deanna Troi them to the next plot point, and get together with Stiles in a rushed and mediocre romance. Allison’s death was cheapened by the completely unexplained obviously not French doppelganger that we only saw in weird flashbacks of questionable relevance. Derek got useless, shot, and disappeared all in one season, and popped back up around the end to kick some bad guy ass and be witty and get thrown into more Sterek queerbaiting scenes. Frankly, I thought Scott had some of the best character development of the original main cast. Jackson notwithstanding because his sudden bisexuality was stupid and terribly written. Scotty had to be the mentor he lacked when he was a baby werewolf for Liam. He had to make big alpha decisions without a whole lot of guidance. He had to face some of the biggest threats the werewolves ever dealt with. And forgiving Liam for almost killing him, biting Hayden, forgiving Theo, learning from Deucalion, falling in love with Kira and letting her go, facing the literal embodiment of fear, and risking permanently blinding himself by clawing out his own eyes to face it, are all incredibly different from that baby Scott from season 1 who put seeing his girlfriend before his own and others’ lives. He grew. Some of you refuse to see that because you’re stuck in the argument he had with Stiles. This fandom is the one that needs to grow.

(3) Tyler Posey’s not winning a billion awards for being the best actor alive. Most people aren’t. But some of this fandom loves to believe that he’s responsible for all the things they didn’t like about the show, that he was selfish for more screentime and it’s his fault Stiles and Kira got less time on the show than many of you hoped. I’ve already addressed how Kira and Arden are not solely Tyler Posey’s fault, and if you want someone to blame, Jeff Davis is *right there*. For the Stiles thing, seriously y’all, stop pitting them against each other. And stop projecting so hard some of you become blame a real person for the actions of their character. Stiles was gone for most of 6b because his actor, Dylan O’Brien, had a serious accident on the set of a Maze Runner movie involving two cars and a train. Not everything on the show happened because of Tyler Posey’s inherent villainy and selfish desire to have as much screentime and attention as possible. No, Stiles’s absence from 6b was not an “anti-Sterek” or homophobic gesture by the screenwriters, and seriously, stop hating on one of the only positive stars of color on all of mainstream American television in the last decade just because of a ridiculous accusation that he was taking time away from a gay ship between two white characters that isn’t even canon. Y’all do not think this hard about Morey, and I don’t wonder why.

I don’t give a shit if you like Scott or Tyler Posey, in fact, most fans can agree that different people have different favorite and least favorite characters. We learn in elementary school that people have different interests and likes and dislikes, and it doesn’t make them bad or wrong, it makes them unique. What is bad and wrong is the blatant racism in not only the show’s treatment of Kira and Scira but also in the fandom’s treatment of Kira, Scira, Scott, and Tyler Posey, and those are the characters of color the fandom even deigns to mention.

TL;DR:

Typically you ask questions, not misleading and racist blanket statements about entire people. Whether anti-Scott folks are being overtly and intentionally racist or not, there is so much prejudice and discrimination just barely beneath the surface of this fandom. You can dislike Scott as much as you want, and you can dislike Tyler Posey as much as you want, but if all your dislike for them is rooted in bias and racism, intentional or not, you’re doing no one a favor by jumping to defend Kira. How did Tyler Posey mistreat Arden Cho? What evidence suggests he’s responsible for Kira being written off? What was Tyler Posey supposed to acknowledge in a cast reunion held by people it wasn’t appropriate to badmouth about? What more could he have said then beyond Dylan O’Brien’s succinct barb about the show leaving Kira in the desert? There’s so much wrong with the Skinwalkers alone that it’d take much longer than the cast reunion to talk about. I’ve been working on this post alone for the last four hours.

This is not, never has been, and never will be, an anti-Scott or anti-Tyler Posey blog. No amount of anonymous “well actually” in my inbox is going to change that. I acknowledge that Scott was a bad leader and bad friend at some points during the series. It’s called character growth. I acknowledge that Tyler Posey has done some questionable things and didn’t fight back as hard as he could have about the treatment of characters of color on Teen Wolf. But I also acknowledge that fighting back against systemic racism gets actors fired, and Teen Wolf would not have meant the same thing if it wasn’t the first time I saw an ambiguously brown kid becoming someone great and overcoming obstacles in a story that wasn’t about his race.

No amount of discourse is going to change the fact that a lot of kids and teenagers and young adults saw a kid of color on mainstream television backflipping onto cars and leaping into battle and thought, “that’s so cool”, and then saw him become a leader and an icon and a freaking awesome character, and thought, “maybe I can be all of those things, too.”

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ironwoman359 · 4 years

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hi im new to the ss fandom so uhh 1. is there a discord where people are alive and 2. what are tags for art where ppl can actually see them bccc i never actually post or contribute or Talk in any sort of fandom ever but idk i might try bc yall are very nice but im also a ball of anxiety and confrontation issues so. Yes. ill shut up now since u probably have a bunch of asks

Hi there, welcome to the fandom! As far as discords go, I am not much of a discord user, I’m in one(1) TS creators discord and just ask anyone else there how often I show up XD (It’s not much) so I’m not the person to ask about that, but I do know there are tons of servers out there! Fanders, reblog this with your active TS servers!

As for the tags, general art tags you usually see are #ts art, #ts fanart, or just plain old #sanders sides. Fanfic tags are usually #ts fanfic, #ts fic, #sanders sides fanfiction, or again, just #sanders sides. You can also search for specific sides content by searching their name either as #virgil sanders or #ts virgil. Occasionally some people will still post as their function, like #anxiety sanders, but really #deceit sanders is the only one you’ll find lots of content under, for the other five we just use their names.

When perusing the tags, you may find "unsympathetic sides” content. This refers to fic or art of a side acting cruel, manipulative/abusive, or villainous in an out of character way. If that kind of content is something you don’t want to see, block the tags #unsympathetic (character first name) for whichever side you don’t want to see that way. #unsympathetic patton, #unsympathetic virgil, and #unsympathetic roman are the ones I see most often, but there are whole sideblogs dedicated to creating unsympathetic content for one or ALL of the sides. If that’s something you think would be cool to explore, I encourage you to check out those tags and those blogs (such as @unsympathetic-core-sides), and if that’s something you DON’T want to see, block those tags and blogs.

Speaking of tags and characters, some people also tag #sympathetic deceit or #sympathetic remus, for when they’re portraying our dark boys as NOT villainous, etc. sof if THAT kind of portrayal isn’t something you’d like, block those tags as well. Some people also tag unsympathetic dark sides, but it’s a minor debate in the fandom how to go about that, and, at least in terms of fic, I find mentioning how they’re going to be portrayed (good, bad, morally grey, etc.) in the content warnings section much more helpful than trying to tag specific characterizations in the tags themselves.

In whatever you’re going to read though, make sure to read over the warnings at the beginning to see if the story is something you want to experience, it’s up to you to cultivate your online experience, not an author.

And last thing to know before you dive into this lovely community of ours is ship names! In case you don’t know all the ship names yet, here you go!

Prinxiety: Roman/Virgil

Logicality: Logan/Patton

Moxiety: Patton/Virgil

Logince: Logan/Roman

Royality: Roman/Patton

Analogical: Virgil/Logan

Roceit: Roman/Deceit

Moceit: Patton/Deceit

Loceit: Logan/Deceit

Anxceit: Virgil/Deceit

Dukeceit: Remus/Deceit (also demus)

Intrulogical: Remus/Logan

Intruality: Remus/Patton (I’ve also seen moduke)

Dukexiety: Remus/Virgil

Creativitwins: Roman and Remus’s familial/brotherly relationship name.

Remrom: Roman and Remus’s incest ship name, block this if you do not want to see that kind of content.

LAMP: Logan/Virgil/Patton/Roman

DLAMP: Deceit/Logan/Virgil/Patton/Roman

DR.LAMP: Dukeceit and LAMP existing side by side (idk if lots of people use that label but I think it’s so perfect)

There are 3-way ships too, but I’m not good at remembering all their names, maybe if someone could add on with all of those?

But yeah, that’s all I can think of you need to know, other than one tiny other thing: we try not to use the abbreviation “ss” because that’s the acronym the nazis used for one of their military police units. Use #ts sides or something similar instead. That’s about it though! Welcome to the fandom!

#sanders sides #fanders #anon #asks and answers

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