Fighting With One Hand Tied Behind Her Back
Of all the misogyny directed at Allison Argent, one of the most frustratingly annoying manifestations to me is the idea that the sole reason that she was vulnerable to Gerard's manipulations and fought on his side in the climactic battle in Master Plan (2x12) -- until he betrayed her, that is -- was the suicide of her mother.
Yes, Allison's arc in Season 2 is about the corrupting nature of retributive violence and the danger of letting emotional trauma serve as motivation for violence. Allison acted wrongly. At the end of the season, she acknowledges her own mistakes and takes steps to reclaim herself.
And yet, fandom dismisses this growth as inconsequential, mostly by performing elaborate editing in order to pretend that Victoria's death, though tragic, was ultimately the Argent family's own doing and Allison reaction to it -- hunting down Erica and Boyd and attacking Isaac, Derek, and Scott in the warehouse -- were actions beyond rational thought. (If they're not blaming Scott for not telling Allison about what they see as justification for her mother's death). Fandom often feels -- and does not hesitate to state -- that losing her mother, losing her aunt, being manipulated by her grandfather, losing her relationship with Scott isn't enough for her to seek retributive violence. Indeed, the idea that she has the nerve to start a relationship with Isaac in Season 3A is incomprehensible to them! She was his oppressor!
As a story I read this morning put it, Allison apologizes for treating Isaac that way because "You aren't my enemy."
Yes, he was. Yes. He. Was. (Note, I really like Isaac's character as much as I like Allison's, but if we want to condemn her for her late Season 2 actions -- and ignore her early Season 2 actions -- then we can't really pretend he was an innocent angel baby, either.)
Of the 22 people who died (though several of them didn't stick) in the previous 23 episodes of the series, 19 of them were killed by werewolves or by creatures who were supposed to be werewolves and were bitten by werewolves. The Hale Pack acted exactly as the Argents described them -- violent creatures who kill people. Let's do a count.
This isn't even including physical assaults against her and her friends. She spent an entire episode trying to stop Isaac (and others) from executing Lydia on a hunch. Yet, Allison hunting down the werewolves who tried to kill people, the kanima who tried to kill people, the werewolf alpha who turned them and trained them to kill people somehow makes her worse than them.
The production recognized that she was no better and no worse than the Hales. Which is why she got to stand up to Derek in Chaos Rising (3x02). Which is why she didn't bother to offer an apology to Isaac in Unleashed (3x04). Because they didn't have to offer any to her. They just had to be better.
Fandom has a significant problem with this because they keep looking at the Hale vs. Argent fight and coming to the conclusion that the Hales were right and the Argents were wrong, when they were both wrong. It's ridiculous that fandom can justify Isaac and Erica chasing and attacking Stiles and Allison in Scott's house because they were trying to stop a murderous kanima and then turn around and complain that after spending half-a-season trying to stop werewolves from killing people, Allison had no justification tracking down Boyd and Erica. (The production said neither had justification). It's ridiculous that they think Allison shouldn't have stabbed Isaac, an 'innocent' teenager, in the warehouse and thus has to make amends but Serial-Killer Petey had every reason to gut Jackson, an 'innocent' teenager, during the same fight.
Teen Wolf's mistake was making the Hales white men and the Argent's mostly women (and an old guy). I guarantee that Alan Argent wouldn't have been expected to make it up to Isabella Lahey; it would have just been the consequences of a fight.
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