#sciles fandom

1. His Dad

2. Scott

3. The Jeep

Stiles: I kissed her...

Scott: I saw

Stiles: She kissed me!

I wrote a four page response to this question, all about intersectionality and the myth of fandom responsibility and safe spaces and the problem with equating casual fans with regular fandom and the ways I’ve seen the sciles fandom collectively grow and develop in really positive ways over the past year and a half that I’ve been a part of it. And then I recognized that no one is really going to care about my four pages of rambling once I say this: No, I don’t think Stiles is a bad person, and I don’t think Scott and Stiles are in an abusive friendship. But I think it’s understandable if other people do.

I recognize why people would interpret their relationship like that, which is why I never respond to those posts, even when every other post on my dash is “Fuck the sciles fandom” (and lately, haha, yeah, it’s been pretty prevalent). It’s not like those posts don’t hurt me, or make me question what I’m still doing in this fandom, especially when they come from people I like and respect. I just am also able to recognize that those opinions are absolutely valid and I do my best to internalize the lessons that need to be learned from them. But I am not ever going to be Anti Stiles, or Anti Sciles, or think that their relationship is somehow worse than literally every other relationship on the show.

I’m going to continue to be sensitive and mindful about the fan works I put into the world, and I’m going to continue to participate in Scott positive blogging circles, and I’m not going to shut down anybody else’s critique of Stiles as a character or his interactions with Scott.

But I’m also not going to act like the sciles fandom hasn’t, as a whole, done a lot to improve in the last year - by creating more fic that is from Scott’s POV, by creating more fan works that explore Scott’s bisexuality, by writing more pining!Scott and sub!Scott and bottom!Scott and hurt!Scott and depressed!Scott, all things we should continue collectively to do. I remember very clearly the discussions we all had last summer about how we needed to improve, and I know many of us took those things to heart. I did; that’s why I made the writing choices I’ve made over the past year. It was important to me then, and it remains important to me now.