i'm not red riding hood; [eway]

[hypercompetent]

Name: Sisi
DW username: melocoton 
E-Mail: akatsukiaddict@gmail.com
IM: inquisitioned 
Other Characters: N/A  

Character Name: Stiles Stilinski 
Series: Teen Wolf
Timeline: Post season 2. 

Canon Resource Link: I turn into the abominable snowman. It's a seasonal thing. 

Character Background: 
....Um. I have a lot of source material to work with. I'm sorry. 

In canon, most of Stiles Stilinski's life is referenced in the present tense. From what we know about his childhood, he was raised in loving home with the Sheriff of Beacon Hills for a father and an unknown mother, and has been best friends with main character Scott McCall since he was tiny. His life has been centered around Scott for as long as he can remember, and as such, when bad things happen to Scott, Stiles is the first person to back him up. As a young child, he was diagnosed with ADHD, and has been on Adderall ever since, although his use of it can be a little...errant. ("Are you okay?! What happened?! And yes, I've had a lot of adderall today!") In canon the ADHD is typically represented through a state of hyperfocus--when he's called upon to research the possibility of lycanthropy, he's up all night, poring over information and gathering books of a questionable nature in order to make sure that Scott, and by proxy, Stiles, is well informed--impulsivity, and a short attention span. Despite this, he's gotten good grades for most of his life, and is shown getting A's even in classes where the teacher probably definitely hates his guts. All in all, he was a normal, fairly well adjusted kid, and he grew up in the heart of suburbia, sleepy little Beacon Hills, California. It's also to be noted that some time as a kid--around third grade, according to one of his asides-- he decided he was madly in love with one Lydia Martin, and that crush has continued to stay with him to the present day. (But more on that later.) 

The first major impact to Stiles' life was the death of his mother. As far as we know, she died of cancer, two years from the present. The loss of his mother rocked his world, and the most major development to come out of it was a fierce tightening of the relationship between him and his father. His dad is literally all he has left, and despite the fact that they have your typical father-and-teenage-son relationship, when Stiles saw a body on a gurney and nearly thought it was him, you could practically see the panic in his eyes--even more so when he found his dad and hugged him again. The second notable effect from his mother's death was a series of violent panic attacks. Stiles describes them when something similar happens to Scott, and from what we can glean, he doesn't often have them anymore. The panic attacks are a viable thing, and while he's almost constantly (lately) in a state of hypervigiliant, jumpy fear, they have yet to blur the line of bent over panic; Jeff Davis has mentioned the chances of him having one in the next season. Stiles still isn't over his mother's death, and for some unknown reason, he blames himself for it--he has a massive guilt complex, and the death of his mother is just one tiny piece of it. 

Sometime in 2012, Scott McCall got bitten by a werewolf. And then shit really hit the fan. See, Stiles' life is absolutely integral with Scott's--they take the phrase "attached at the hip" to a completely new level. And when something bad happened to Scott, Stiles was A) the first one to know about it (see: let me joke with you about lycanthropy and then spend twelve hours actually seriously researching it) and B) the first one to back up Scott in pretty much every decision-slash-nightmare that came along with it. Scott even turns into, to put it in Stiles' words, "a huge ass and like, the worst friend possible" during the full moon (luckily only the first time), and he still sits with him, still does what he has to do to make sure Scott's going to be okay. He's Scott's cheerleader when he makes first line (despite being on the team himself), when he gets the girl, and then there to comfort him when he loses her. In fact, his ingenuity is what helps Scott find his "anchor", although the word ingenuity could probably be replaced with "hare-brained-scheme-plus-stress-relief", where he lobbed lacrosse balls at a tied up Scott until he got pissy. As the wisecracking best friend/human (who makes comments about his attractiveness to gay guys and sasses most of Beacon Hills, all in the span of 12 episodes) Stiles pretty much immediately becomes the Robin to Scott's Batman, and despite some complaining, he's generally settled pretty well into this position.

Don't get him wrong though. Stiles' new life with the supernaturally inclined is not all peaches and cream. In fact, it kind of sucks. A lot. The months after Scott got bitten have culminated in him getting injured more times than he can count--granted, half of these things are because he couldn't shut his mouth and stop sassing the villains, but. He's harbored a criminal (who wasn't really a criminal, but Scott and Stiles kind of got him arrested--getting back to that whole hare brained scheme thing.), hacked into a computer with someone else's help, been kidnapped by a megalomaniac alpha and, oh yeah, got to dance with the girl of his dreams. Despite living what is probably about four months in a constant state of hypervigiliance and terror--did he mention terror?--he did get Lydia Martin to actually learn his name. Granted, she's madly in love with someone else, but she at least knows who he is, and the potential for something along the lines of friendship instead of what is borderline celebrity worship is great to form in the future. 

But that can only occur after Peter Hale, the megalomaniac alpha from before, gets his claws in her--literally. Stiles practically begs Peter to leave Lydia alone, and it's in that that the series reveals Stiles' cleverness--how he was able to figure out where Derek Hale (and by proxy, Kate Argent--the real big baddie of the season) were hiding out by a cellphone signal. Peter obviously took notice of this, because after leading Stiles through a multitude of ridiculous things and what amounts to, yes, kidnapping, he offers Stiles the bite. The power his friends had. Never being the sidekick.

He turns it down. 

The reason isn't stated in canon, but Dylan O'Brien covered later that he didn't want to take it because of his dad. He'd seen the strain the bite had put on Scott and his mother--Scott and most of his friends--and putting that on his dad after all the hell they went through would have been too much. And so, life moved on. Derek became the alpha. Scott and Allison were madly in love, and Stiles still had his best friend and pretty good prospects with Lydia (maybe). 

But because this is Stiles' life, nothing can ever be easy, and there's a whole other season of crap that goes down.

Season two starts off with a bang when Lydia Martin goes missing. Considering she'd been in a coma, that's generally not a good thing. Stiles works himself into a frenzy trying to find her, frantically tailing Scott and trying to exhaust every manner of search possible--he's even very, uh. forthcoming with the details for her EPB. ("She's five foot three, green eyes, and her hair is actually strawberry blonde.") And when they do find her, she's naked. Stiles is there. Needless to say he falls for her, and quite literally--he trips over himself and faceplants in his attempt to get her his dad's jacket. 

The phrase "kanima" begins to get tossed around as what amounts to literally a lizard monster that's somebody's murderpuppet starts merrily killing people in town. Stiles gets his first taste of Jackson 2.0 (although he doesn't know it's Jackson--no one does) because he happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and gets paralyzed by the kanima's venom from the neck down for the first time. Yes, I said first time. The kanima continues to terrorize the good people of Beacon Hills, and the great mystery of the season becomes heavily entwined around the teenagers involved. Stiles gets unfortunately acquainted with the members of Derek's newly founded "pack", usually in not so nice ways--one in particular brains him with a car part when he starts interfering. In fact, he gets unfortunately acquainted with Derek Hale himself when Derek attempts to threaten him into telling what he saw in the car shop the night he was paralyzed; the kanima ended up being right behind them, and Derek got himself paralyzed trying to push Stiles out of the way. They ended up in about seven feet of water together, Derek completely paralyzed, for two and a half hours. This is all after he manages to get Lydia to stop crying and then has to leave her, in a tragic stroke of luck that's mostly exemplary of Stiles' love life, right when he says he'd stay with her as long as she needed. Needless to say, Stiles was none too pleased with these developments, but it was really a large turning point in a relationship that had gone from threats and fighting to saving each other's lives. 

Of course, that's all well and good until Derek thinks Lydia is the kanima, and basically sends his three stooges betas to kill her. Scott and Stiles both do not take this well, to say the least, and they actively defend Lydia for as long as humanly possible--in fact, between them they manage to beat the three betas, and send them crying back home to their alpha.

Naturally, that's when the actual kanima, Jackson, goes shooting out of the window. Stiles and Scott start to follow him, straight into a gay club. Stiles gets petted by drag queens (who apparently adore him), and Scott gets a free drink, which Stiles "Am I Attractive to Gay Guys" Stilinski is immensely jealous of ("Heheh." "--Oh shut up."), and after Jackson is mostly apprehended in Jungle, Stiles has his Icing on the Cake Idea, and caps the whole lizard chasing evening off by stealing a police van and trapping Jackson in it. Jackson transforms anyway, Stiles and Scott get slapped with restraining orders, and Scott even gets grounded, where his punishment is--gasp--no Stiles. Despite the silly air to Stiles' talk with his dad ("You're not gay." "I could be!" "Not dressed like that."), there's a chord that strikes with Stiles in it--his father says he barely knows his own kid anymore because he lies so often.

From there on out, it becomes a twisted web of mysteries, and Stiles' most integral role is figuring out two things--who is the kanima, and who is his master. Stiles starts to talk to Erica, the beta who beaned him with the car part, a little more, and despite the fact that she threatened him, they start to bond a little more--"you wanna be Catwoman? Then I'll be your Batman." becomes "[Stiles], you make a pretty good Batman." when Stiles holds Erica during a terrible seizure. Stiles is the first one to suspect Matt Daehler of being the kanima's master, and although it's played for laughs ("He just looks evil."), it turns out Stiles is probably, as usual, right. And as things culminate, Scott, Stiles, and reluctantly, Derek and his betas, begin to work together, and one of the most important responsibilities to their little plan is assigned--not to Scott, not to Derek, but to Stiles. This is a huge deal for him--he tries to pass the job off to someone else, because holy god, why Stiles. But Deaton, the vet-slash-magician-slash-we-don't-really-know-what's-he-is (welcome to Teen Wolf) explains to Stiles that he has some sort of a magic spark--he acts as a conduit to a circle barrier created by magic ash. And sure enough, when he puts the circle down, he runs out of the ash. But when Stiles keeps walking, when he wills it to go, the circle closes itself. This traps the kanima inside and gives Stiles and the betas a chance to talk to Jackson--the master in the kanima's consciousness, actually--and Stiles takes that time to interrogate him. All in all, it's a pretty impressive day for Stiles, and he exalts, to say the least ("I did something!") when his magic barrier actually works...up until he gets home and he realizes his dad has gotten fired. Because his kid got a restraining order. 

Needless to say, things do not go well for Stiles and his guilt complex after that. 

They attempt to regroup at Lydia's birthday party. Despite the fact that she's pretty much being seen as the town crazy--"I'm in love with a nutjob", Stiles reminds them--the boys endeavor to throw her a great party. Naturally it's the full moon and everything goes terribly wrong, because Lydia, under a magical influence, spikes the punch with something that makes everyone hallucinate. Stiles sees his father telling him he's a "hyperactive bastard", and that his mom's death was all Stiles' fault. It ends up with him in tears. 

After that, Stiles and Scott take the whole "find the kanima" thing up to another level, and Stiles and his dad work together on yearbooks, proving that, in fact, the Stilinskis are a better crime fighting team than the main characters. They invite Scott over once the two reach a conclusion about the swim team, and juust as they figure out that Matt Daehler is in fact the master of the kanima (continuing to prove that Stiles Is Always Right), they go to the police station, and Matt is oh so glad to prove that that's true.

With a gun. 

The sheriff gets handcuffed up to something. Scott gets shot. (Luckily, he heals). Stiles gets a gun pointed in his face. And just when they think Derek is there to save them, the kanima is right behind him, paralyzing both Stiles and Derek in one shot. Stiles falls on Derek. Matt calls them a good pair. Millions of shippers rejoice. But anyway, they spend most of the episode down on the ground talking about how crazycakes Matt is and how they're planning on getting up once they're unparalyzed. Of course, Derek gets it done first---werewolf healing powers and all--and Stiles is left on the ground, paralyzed, to watch his dad get socked in the face by Matt, and there's literally nothing he can do about it. It stirs up an immense wave of guilt and overall uselessness that he refers to in another episode. He can't do anything that Scott and Derek can do, and he just wants to do something.


The boys are sent to counseling the next day, and Stiles gets some valuable advice, after giving his opinion on the whole thing--on Matt, and on what happened to him. (Namely, his death.) He's a little distant from Scott after the night. Allison is possibly nuts. Lydia is also possibly nuts. Jackson is still a lizard monster, and his dad got fired. So yeah, his life is kind of terrible right now. The guidance counselor quotes Winston Churchill at him, however--'If you're going through hell, keep going."--and it becomes a soldering promise. The simple matter is that they need to survive, and with the night that's about to come? They're gonna need it. 

Everything comes to a head during the lacrosse match--which, by the way? Stiles has to play in. Both captains are out, and we learn pretty quickly that Stiles is a benchwarmer for a reason. But as the game continues, he scores a goal. In fact, he scores another. And then another! And while chaos is going on throughout Beacon Hills--Gerard and Scott in a faceoff, Jackson about to kill someone unknown--Stiles has his moment of glory, grinning like a big doofus and making his dad proud. But when the lights go out and the nightmare of the night descends Stiles is gone, leaving his dad to look around the field in a panic, asking "Where is my son? Where's Stiles? Where's my son?"

Where he was was kidnapped. Gerard Argent, the Big Bad, took Stiles as what was basically a bargaining chip, along with Erica and Boyd. And when Stiles tried to rescue them, Gerard definitely made him pay for it. He took a massive bruise across the face and what amounted to an absolute asskicking--even after saying "Scott will find me"...well, to say it nicely, he didn't. 

In the end, Gerard finally let him go. But he left Erica and Boyd behind--which said a lot--and was returned to his dad in mostly one piece. Bruised both in his face and his pride, not even a visit from Lydia (who had cheered for him at the match) could cheer him up, especially considering all she really wanted to do was be upset about Jackson. Lydia still has no idea what's going on and Stiles outbursts at her about wanting her to be safe--how much she means to him. She leaves a little while later, and when his dad asks if he has a chance, he shakes his head no. The pep talk he gets from his dad really does a lot for his morale, however--the sheriff calls Stiles a hero. And Stiles denies it, but by the end of the talk, he's apparently kicked into gear. 

Because when shit gets serious--when Peter (the megalomaniac alpha--btw, he's alive! Don't you love Teen Wolf?), Derek, Gerard and his minion Jackson, Allison, Scott, and the remains of the beta brigade come together, Stiles appears just in time to get Jackson distracted. 

By literally ramming him with his powder blue jeep. 

Stiles brings Lydia. Lydia shows she loves Jackson. Jackson is saved, and Stiles is heartbroken--you catch him crying. But either way, it appears the kanima mystery is finally solved. Scott ultimately loses Allison, his first line position, and pretty much every advantage being a werewolf. Stiles loses all the buildup he got with Lydia. 

In the end, it all comes back to Scott and Stiles. And as they're playing lacrosse to each other, Scott describes this--Stiles makes a face about being chopped liver. But then, he offers his hands and says, "Dude. You've always had me." And thus, the season ends, with Stiles, naturally, yelling about Scott cheating with wolf powers. 

Abilities/Special Powers: 

See, the thing about Stiles is he's special in his lack of "special" qualities. He is extremely clever, and able to work his way through many incredibly difficult challenges. He's of average size--147 pounds of pale flesh and fragile bone--and not the world's fastest runner, although he's not half bad at it. His hyperfocus comes with a high price, but when he's able to focus, he can focus on something absolutely for a long period of time. He has fast reflexes from playing lacrosse, and is a very adept researcher. At sixteen, he's lived a supernatural warrior's life to say the least, and he adjusts really well to crazy situations. 

Special powers wise, the only thing that comes to mind is his ability as a catalyst--his "spark". While we know little about it, we know that Stiles has some sort of either ability for magic, or an ability to conduct magic. It could be either at this point--it's something he's interested in learning about, but with the nightmare that the end of his season was, that can only happen in the future.



Third-Person Sample:

Sometimes, Stiles thought that the digital clock in his room actually judged him. 

 

It wasn't that far-fetched of an assumption, to be honest. The red numbers were currently blaring him as he sat cross legged on his bed, drumming his fingers against the surface of his laptop, the only other light besides the judgmental 3:10 AM staring him in the face from across the room.  To be up this late wasn't an abnormal experience for the teenager--his mind worked like a twelve speed bike that someone had cut the brake lines to-- but it didn't change the fact that he could practically hear the time being read off in his dad's voice. It's three in the damn morning, kid. Go to bed. I just got home. 

 

Normally one of these binges would be an obsessive trek into the depths of World of Warcraft, or a long list of stupid youtube videos about how to fold paper or unlock a door with a shoelace (to be fair, that had been pretty useful.) But Stiles Stilinski's life had not been normal since his best friend had become a werewolf, and now, instead of video games and caffeine and too much adderall, he was hunched over his computer screen with a pen, a small dictionary (clearly labeled: LATIN TO ENGLISH), and an ancient looking tome labeled VETUS LATINA spread out over his lap. When the Bestiary, an ancient tome of All Things That Go Bump in the Night--not the dictionary definition, but Stiles's was more succinct and less stuffy--had fallen into their laps, Stiles had taken it on as his personal project, out of a combined sense of need to contribute to his best friend's general wolflihood, masochism, and sheer determination. 

 

It didn't help that the Girl of His Dreams, literally, spoke archaic Latin. It was part of her perfect, terrifying charm. Plus, he could use it to spend more time with her, a thought that had eagerly sent him scurrying off to the library and scrounging around the language section until he'd come out with his new textbook best friend and a very grumpy librarian, who seemed none too pleased with his dramatic stumble off the ladder and into the shelf behind his.

 

 

"Speaking archaic Latin. That's gonna look great on a resume someday." Stiles mumbled under his breath, snapping back to focus as he turned the page of the ancient textbook--seriously, this thing looked like it was older than his father, and the Sheriff wasn't exactly a spring chicken--to a page full of grammar rules. It responded with a puff of dust as he turned the page, and as the teenager coughed, he managed an "Et tu, Brute!", waving the dust out of his face. 

 

When his vision finally de-dusted and he squinted his vision back into focus, Stiles' eyes caught on the distinctly red numbers of the digital clock again. And, more importantly, another object, glowing bright red in the dark of his room at three in the morning.

 

"Ohmygod--!" Jumping about a foot in the air, Stiles managed to upend the book in his lap, the dictionary, and nearly sent his Macbook flying across the room in a massive, sweeping flail of his gawky limbs--the sight of Derek Hale, brooding Alpha of Beacon Hills, however, made his shoulders (and his arms, and his hands, and most of his body,) drop.  Stiles snapped his head back up as Derek actually entered the room without a word, and hissed over the pound of his heartbeat in his ears, "Jesus freakin' Christ, could you knock?! "

 

 

First-Person Sample: 

 [ When Stiles snaps awake, he's not in his bed like he remembered. He'd done his usual nightly routine--skype Scott till eleven, play an RPG until one and pass out dead until the morning for school. Oh no. Fate is awful to Stiles Stilinski, and Stiles Stilinski wakes up in the middle of a pool, spluttering and gasping for air, the wall unit catching his feed. 

He looks around wildly, startled, brown eyes blown comically huge as he manages to get his bearings and tread water as the whole situation settles itself in his mind, and slowly, his brows come down and his mouth drops open. ]

This?! Is not funny! 

[ Emphatic arm splashing. ] 

Jesus frickin' Christ, for all you know I have pool trauma from that nightmare! [ And he's at least trying to get to the side now. Stiles' grumbling and yelling is easily caught on the communicator. ] Look, I'm seriously getting kidnapped more than Princess damn Peach herself, and throwing me in a pool for added shits and giggles is just wrong, so just. I'm the squishy useless one with a lot of really badass friends, and playing dogmatic jokes is really a terrible way of getting on their good side, considering one of them, if we're using the term "friend" kind of liberally, was involved in said pool trauma-- 

[ At least he manages to lift himself, sopping wet and obviously irritated, up onto the poolside. ] 

And if there's a paralytic lizard douchebag waiting to swipe me up there, I swear to everything that is holy in this goddamn world--[ And he grumbles and starts wringing out his hoodie. Nice to meet you, Wonderland. ]