c-is-for-circinate:

Meta Item #1: STILES AND BATS

First on the list of things that I have been thinking about for three days and can FINALLY DISCUSS.

Okay, I know some people got very upset after Stiles’ bat shattered in the hospital.  *ahem*.  Very, very upset.

Which led to some…interesting conclusions.

The funny thing is, though, and I can’t believe I’m saying this—it totally is a case of, you need the right kind of bat.  The finale came right out and said it.  Only it has nothing at all to do with Sterek and everything to do with Stiles.

Fandom gave Stiles a bat for a weapon.  It’s a good weapon, sturdy, strong, something mundane repurposed into something possibly deadly.  Melissa and Scott both wield it during the actual show, and it’s symbolic in its own way.  They’re Clan McCall, the warrior-healers (and lest you try to tell me that Melissa isn’t a warrior in her own way, can I just point out, attacked an alpha werewolf with a defibrillator and won).  Scott himself is a relentlessly ordinary thing turned deadly.  It fits.

It doesn’t fit for Stiles.  Because Stiles isn’t a warrior.  Remember when Stiles picked up the defibrillator paddles?  “Do you know how to use those?”  "No.“  A powerful weapon that gets used to great effect later that same episode, by Melissa “Why does Stiles have my bat?” McCall, but it’s not Stiles’ weapon.  That’s not what Stiles does.

There was some meta a long, long time ago, well pre-S3, that I wish I could find again, about Stiles and weapons and how he’s never seen to use them.  He uses tools: a handful of mountain ash, a few lacrosse balls and some duct tape, a stolen transport van, a jeep.  He hits Jackson once with a closed fist in anger, and Derek on two separate occasions, not in violence, but to wake him up.  Think about it: the simplest weapon a human being has in their arsenal, their own hand, and Stiles isn’t even using it as an attack.  It’s a tool.

Stiles isn’t the warrior guy.  Stiles is a problem-solver, a fixer, a builder, a maker.  He stares at the Argents as they arm up and doesn’t even make a motion towards taking a gun for himself, any more than Lydia would—any more than Deaton would, or Morrell.  And you know what?  He doesn’t fucking need to.

Because the moral of the story is, Stiles saves the fucking day, with the right bat.

If you want to make this about Jeff Davis sending a ‘fuck you’ direct to fandom, then fine: the fuck you to fandom is, you’re wrong about what makes Stiles worthwhile.  He’s not the battlefield hero, and there are so many victories to be won that are not about the battlefield.  Stiles is exactly who he’s meant to be, sometime sidekick and last-minute savior, problem solver and quick thinker and tool user.

Stiles once drove a Jeep straight into Jackson Whittemore, and it was the most successfully violent thing he’s ever done on this show, except that the whole point of the action was to deliver Lydia, the tool that could save Jackson and make a fight unnecessary, to the battlefield.  Stiles doesn’t need the simple, rustic ash bludgeon of the Clan McCall to be useful.  He is his father’s son, and the sheriff might carry a gun but he does his best work with his brain and his badge.  And Stiles saves everybody’s fucking life with his favorite kind of bat.