User blog comment:Paul.rea/Teen Wolf News 102613/@comment-130.204.244.217-20131028114440

The "articles" that have come out this week have been a idiotic witch hunt towards the Social Media of Teen Wolf, that has been extremely successful and if anyone wants to even start that argument with me on that, bring facts (and not several hundreds people who can't get a joke).

Simple facts re-TW Social Media - since the start of S3A the numbers of Twitter followers on that account has doubled. In the last year the likes on the Facebook page have gone up by nearly a million, with no special promotion there. It had the lead of in the TV Guide poll that closed today [results unknown till the beginning of December]. During the airing of S3a Teen Wolf was one of the most social active shows. All point to clear successes of the Social Media representative. He/she hasn't offended anyone while representing the show. Not getting a joke or don't liking what gifs they use is not an offense, but I thing you are allowed to dislike. Yes I saw people disliking that TW Social is using O'Brien/Hoechlin gifs to get more people to vote and there is nothing inherent wrong or queer-baiting in that - they're simply using popular actors out of character and promising nothing. They have no control over the storyline of the show, which is in the control of the writers and they are not such. They don't even work for the writing/producing team, they work for MTV, which the team behind the show also works. The social person getting blame for anything happening on the show is as if you getting blame for your colleagues work, that is even higher on the ladder than you. When you all preach fairness etc. why do you all ignore that fact? Or is it too inconvenient to your "argument"?

Re - the show killing all women and POC and treating them the worst. Bullshit. Going into 3b there are 8 main or semi-regular characters that are non white males, including the main one - Scott, Allison, Lydia, Kira [the actress said on Twitter she's on for all 12 episodes], Melissa, Danny, Deaton, Morrell. There's also Cora, but the actress is on another show. At least 4 of them are fully fleshed characters [some of them even got the best development in 3a out of all characters, like Allison]. There are 6 semi-regular non-white non-male characters that have bitten the bullet - Ms. Argent, Boyd, Erica, Jennifer, Kali and Kate.

The reason I'm not counting every possible character is that those that have been in less than 2-3 episodes are placed on the show to die and their gender doesn't affect what is happening to them in the sense that the team could have chosen a white guy to play The Mystery Guy [in this case] and that wouldn't have changed a single thing in the story. They choose to give that screen time to a women of color. With the 3 virgin deaths the one that got the least screen time? The white guy. Most screen time - two women, all of them LGBT. All 3 are dead, so again, it wouldn't have mattered if all 3 have been guys [maybe nobody would have kissed Stiles, but there would have been 3 deaths still]. The teachers? Still the women of color got the most screen time, compared to the white guy who was also killed [in the warehouse with Mr. Argent, Allison and Isaac], who got almost none.

Another thing that is against the "awful treatment" of non-white non-male characters - only 2 of the mentioned above deaths could be linked to character arcs of a white guy - Erica and Boyd. The death of Kate and Ms.Argent wasn't to develop Cris Argent or Grandpa Argent, but Allison. Her mother's death played a pivotal role in HER character arc, not that of a guy. Jennifer's and Kali's arcs were full circle and their deaths weren't to further any white guy's arc. Kali's death was part of Jennifer's story. Not Decaulion, not the twins. Because just the number of deaths doesn't tell the whole story, just ask anyone who has watched the last several years of Doctor Who and the treatment of alive female "characters".

Does that make Teen Wolf perfect? No, far from it, just like 99% of all mass media. But it doesn't make them the worst offender, as those articles and some of the comments here have tried to present it. I already mentioned Doctor Who, but what about Supernatural - there isn't a non-white non-male character who has been in more than 15 episodes of its 190+ run. All six who have been in more are white males [check IMDB, that's where I get the info, as I don't watch the show]. Or The Vampire Diaries - out of the 17 characters who have been in more than 1/10 of the show, 9 are women and 4 of them are dead [and one got shipped to the spin-off], compared to one dead white guy. So 44 % of women are killed vs. 12,5% of white guys. Where is the uproar there? And in those 17 characters, there are only two POC - Bonnie Bennett [who also got killed on screen, but is a series regular as a ghost, so I don't count her above] and Tyler Lockwood. I have no idea about the quality of the storylines women and POC are getting on this show [all the info above is from 10 minutes on IMDB], but how is that statistic better than TW?

Bottom line - Teen Wolf could get better in terms of featuring a more diverse cast and I take as a big plus that the only announced new major addition to the cast is a woman of color. As for who gets killed, you're basing your judgment on mainly 12 episodes [of the 6 deaths mentioned, 4 happened S3a], so while you have the right to dislike that direction, doing the final math now is extremely skewed by one half of a season, when the math in S1 and S2 wasn't like that - 2 women [Kate and Victoria Argent] vs. Matt and Mr.Lahey, with the women getting the better character arcs from those two groups. Could Davis have killed more white guys? Yes. Did he? No. Will he? We'll see in 3B, when the math will look be looked at again.