Derek Hale (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selfassured) wrote2014-06-23 08:26 pm
selfassured) wrote2014-06-23 08:26 pm
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rythulian
Other Characters Played: N/A
Requested apartment: N/A
Character Name: Derek Hale
Canon: Teen Wolf
Canon Point: 3x24 – The Divine Move (Otherwise known as the final episode of season 3b.)
Background/History: Over here
Previous Game History: While life in Exitvoid, specifically in the city of Zelien, wasn’t as bad as it could have been for Derek, it wasn’t particularly great by any standard either. Aside from a fair amount of weight loss, the result of several weeks on the bare minimum amount of food followed by a week and a bit with nothing at all, the werewolf’s appearance hasn’t suffered from the less than pleasant challenges present by COMPASS. The physical damage healed, from the skin-crawling bugs to a fatal gunshot wound, it’s the mental damage that’s managed to linger.
Within a week of arriving in the city the cultists turned up for their first attempt at human sacrifices. That in itself wasn’t the problem for Derek, the thing that really got to him was the method of sacrifice that they had chosen, being burnt alive. Given the fact that the majority of his family was burnt to death in his childhood home, the idea of people suffering the same fate didn’t sit well with him to say the least. Throw in mind control to force people into burning themselves alive and it’s a bit of a worst case scenario for the guy. While he was left unaffected, the fact that Scott and Isaac were made the situation so much worse for him. Strangers burning he could have dealt with just fine, but not people he’s familiar with. While dealing with Scott was more or less fine, a little unsettling but overall an easy encounter, it was staying the night with a half-crazy Isaac that really shook him up. Trying to keep his then beta locked in a room with him while attempting to talk the teenager out of setting himself on fire was a bit of a challenge. Derek’s not the best at comforting talks on a good day; throw in one his nightmare scenarios and it’s an uphill struggle to avoid saying the wrong thing. While he did manage to push the event to the back of his mind eventually, things were awkward between him and Isaac from that point on. Awkward to the point where they barely crossed paths with one another, let alone spoke.
What’s worse than people setting themselves on fire? Facing a SAW-esque ‘game’ with a couple of strangers and believing that only one person can escape. At the time Derek and his companions had been under the impression that one of them could leave the room and simply bring back help for the remaining prisoners. The reality of the situation? Shrapnel bombs the moment Derek left the room. Needless to say, Derek feels guilty about being the one to escape the blast, regardless of the fact that the choice to send him out had been a group decision. As far as he’s concerned he’d been stuck in the room with a pair of humans, his guilt is justified. He would have healed from the damage done by the blast, he could have prevented on of his fellow prisoners from gaining a life-altering injury. In his mind, as illogical as it might sound, he feels responsible for two archers being rendered half blind. If he’d been the one to stay at least one of the others could have been spared. Hindsight is 20/20 though. While one of the women left the city shortly after the event, he couldn’t look the other in the face again.
While not necessarily a bad thing, Derek didn’t exactly appreciate the fact that he lost his werewolf powers for a week. Being human didn’t sit well with him, it made him feel vulnerable and surprisingly fragile. That said, given the fact that his powers were transferred to someone else, it did give him the motivation to actively offer assistance for once. Over the course of the full moon night he bonded to a certain extent with a werewolf from another world, one who had retained her powers, and strengthened his tentative friendship with her. One of the few friendships he actually had during his stay in the city. On the less pleasant side of things he also clashed heads with Scott, something that would go on to be a running theme between the pair of them, over ideas on how to keep the newly ‘formed’ werewolves from murdering everything that moved. Derek kept pushing the idea of pain as a way to keep the werewolves from shifting, Scott kept refusing the idea.
Several weeks later, upon finding out that the mystery books inside the campus library had decoded themselves, Derek pushed aside his more violent, head first line of thinking and decided to hit the books instead. From this point onward he notably started to stray away from his ‘fight first, ask questions later’ method of operation and instead went for a more logical route. Any quiet moment he could utilise between COMPASS’ experiments, he spent either in the library or in a generally quiet area of the campus reading over the lore of the city, attempting to theorise out the cultists’ plan along with Stiles. Not as odd a choice for company as it might initially appear.
The next key moment for Derek wasn’t for a fair number of weeks after the book decoding event. The campus grounds were transported to the ruined city of London. While it didn’t offer much in terms of character development for Derek, or mental scarring as the case may be, the main point here is that Derek had his ‘major’ death here. Upon hearing voices from the ‘Great Old ones’ Derek agreed to lead Stiles to them, just on the off chance that the teenager might have be capable of hearing the voices too. It went as well as expected. Just when they thought they were safe, Derek was bitten by one of the infected ‘residents’ of the ruined land. The infection was passed onto him and he quickly began to succumb to the virus. While he was quickly put down by Stiles, who managed to shoot him in the head before the transformation process could finish, the werewolf does regret the fact there had to be a shooting in the first place. He doesn’t mention it, knows all too well that the topic will cause an argument if brought up, but he does feel a little guilty over how things played out. He let his guard down, he was bitten, he forced a teenager to kill another living being.
Throughout the collapse of COMPASS Derek reverted to more of a self-preserving line of thinking. While he had no objections to helping those he met along the way, he didn’t go out of his way to find people in danger. He stuck close to Stiles, the first person he’d run into after the buildings come alive, until they were transported to COMPASS’ headquarters. Whilst there Derek wasted no time in pushing forward, passing through the tests one by one as quickly as possible without needlessly sacrificing someone else’s life. He waited long enough to meet up with the other Beacon Hills residents before heading home. Well, before heading to what he thought was home at any rate.
With the major events out the way I’ll touch upon the topic of relationship changes. For the most part Derek kept his connections within the city relatively small, a few of the people from Beacon Hills and a couple of select individuals outside of them. He wasn’t social by any means and if anything after the first couple of weeks he managed to become worse at interacting with other people. That didn’t stop him from talking to people who happened to start conversations with him but it did place a strain on his home-based connections.
The two relationships that underwent the most noticeable changes during his time in the city were his ones with Scott and Stiles. He and Scott suffered from numerous clashes on opinion, more so after the library started to decode itself. Scott had wanted to take action, to try and protect everyone; Derek had wanted to lay low for a little longer, to spend more time gathering specific details. It was a bit of a role reversal to say the least. The final straw was reached following an impromptu blood shower, Scott put his foot down on playing the hero and Derek essentially called him an idiot for rushing into the unknown. After that their contact was minimal at best, although they did come together to save a mutual acquaintance, even then it’s using the term ‘together’ extremely loosely though. They did not mend their ‘friendship’ before leaving the city.
In comparison to the downhill slope with Scott, his standing with Stiles had the opposite sort of development. Initially they fought, a lot and on most if not all of their interactions. It wasn’t until after their exploration of the recently discovered Egyptian cavern that they started to form a tentative allegiance. The more weeks that passed by, the closer they became. Derek assisted Stiles with research and attempted to teach him how to fight, Stiles provided food supplies right up until the city ran out of food and generally provided Derek with a little bit of company. Company which he was sorely lacking by the end of his stay in the city, seeing as the majority of his ‘friends’ had left the city limits earlier on.
All in all, Zelien didn’t change Derek to a huge extent; he wasn’t really there long enough for it to have completely broken him. Less than 23 weeks by the end of it all. It has however tweaked a couple of his canon interactions and it has added a little more weight to his already guilt-ridden shoulders. On the plus side it has taught him to be a little more patient, to use his time wisely and plan things out ahead of time, but in comparison it’s also dented his ability to really ‘bond’ with other people. On initial meetings at least. Seeing your friends leave shortly after finding them tends to put someone off the idea altogether after a while.
Personality: If there’s one thing that can be said about Derek, it’s that he’s come a long way from his initial appearance back in S1. He’s still not a very sociable person by any means but there has been a marked improvement over the course of the seasons. Despite what the fandom may have you believe, he’s perfectly capable of talking in full sentences and even extended ones from time to time, it’s just that he tends to have a little more emphasis on body language and facial expressions. He’s a quiet guy, not overly talkative but not silent either, and he does appear to prefer his own company as opposed to a large crowd. That doesn’t mean he’s socially inept though, in fact he’s actually quite adaptable when it comes to interacting with people. To give a couple of examples, he can turn on the charm and flirt with the best of them at a moment’s notice, a skill that seems to primarily be used for the sake of manipulating people, or he can pull the blank faced straight man for the sake of playing the ‘tough guy’ role, which admittedly tends to be his default expression. Following a toning down of his violent tendencies, and his general ‘kill everything’ line of thinking, he’s also perfectly capable of holding a civil conversation, even if the topic in question revolves around a point of view that he may disagree with. Overall he’s just more tolerant of people in general. It could be said that Derek’s come out of his shell in a way, while he still isn’t the sort to openly swap background stories and he’s certainly not the type of guy to talk about his feelings, he can at least uphold a general, everyday talk. Which is more than could be said for his social skills way back at the start of the show.
The interesting thing about Derek’s recent role change within the Beacon Hill’s supernatural group is that he’s settled into a mentor-like role despite his less than impressive teaching history. In the past he’s been very hit or miss at supplying useful information, literally to the point where he’s withheld useful titbits and made situations more difficult than they needed to be. Not to mention the fact that he likely put the entire population at risk due to his silent act. These days the werewolf is thankfully a little more open with sharing his knowledge amongst his acquaintances and allies. He still holds back on what he knows until someone actually asks or needs to know but he doesn’t hold out for half as long as he would have done in the past. If someone were to ask him a question, he would actually answer it instead of giving a vague holdover statement. It doesn’t make him a perfect mentor but it allows him to get the job done and, given his previously terrible attempt at being an Alpha, it’s a role that simply fits him by comparison. It’s also been a position that he’s been trying to fill since season 1, now he actually has a chance to teach Scott, to teach Stiles and everyone else involved. It’s another chance for him to actually be useful instead of relying solely on his ability to be a meat shield. Needless to say a lot of his information revolves around supernatural stories and his own experiences, the latter of which comes into play with both Scott and the former alpha twins who were temporarily under his wing. With Scott he notably teaches him about smelling lingering emotions, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, with the twins he goes into a speech about not giving up and pushing through the difficult times. For Derek it’s a matter of teaching from experience and turning potentially negative memories into something that will be helpful to others. Now, make no mistake, he’s not about to win any awards for this new role within the resident supernatural community, insulting your ‘students’ isn’t the best way to go, but he’s got a lot of information under his belt and he’s willing to try and give more detailed advice this time around. He’s willing to be more of a team player instead of the lonely guy standing off to the side. Again.
Trust is a complicated topic when it comes to Derek, and that’s putting it nicely, given his close history with matters of betrayal one would likely assume that he’d be through with trusting other people. That isn’t necessarily the case. You see, Derek has somewhat of a history of saying that he doesn’t trust certain people and then he usually ends up following their advice a few scenes later. Now, on the one hand this could be seen as straight up naivety, especially when his uncle is involved, or it could be seen as him simply being a guy of second chances in certain cases, such as with the former alpha twins.
In his uncle’s case, there’s a fair amount of history that logically should have put Derek off the idea of trusting him, his sister’s death, a point-blank warning to avoid trusting him and a few personal experiences with Peter’s manipulative personality. And yet Derek frequently takes his advice within the recent seasons, he doesn’t question his uncle’s motives and at one point actually allowed the man to stab him in the back of the neck with his mother’s claws. Now, to be fair to the character it’s clear that Derek doesn’t fully trust his uncle but for all his deeds in the past, he seems to give Peter a larger ‘benefit of the doubt’ than he really should be given. It could be argued that this is down to their familial connection, there are only a couple of Hales wandering about and Derek feels a sense of guilt over the death of his family. In his instance Derek generally seems to come across as naïve simply because of his seeming desire to keep a family member around.
The case of the twins is a little less surprising in comparison. While the twins did assist in forcing Derek to kill one of his betas, Boyd, they actually had a heel-turn character moment at the end of 3a. One of the twins even went so far as to give a warning to Derek, telling him that he had to leave town if he wanted to live. Whether that change of heart played a role in Derek’s decision to try and help the twins integrate into Scott’s pack or whether he simply saw some sort of comparison between himself and them is unclear. All we know is that during 3b, Derek offered up several pieces of advice to try and get on the resident alpha’s good side. In this instance he seems to be giving a clear-cut second chase to the pair, he places their pasts to one side and even states near the end that he’ll make sure to tell Lydia about the one of the twins dying as ‘the good guy’.
With all that in mind let’s make one thing clear, his trust primarily extends to current happenings and life or death situations; it does not extend to stories from his background. To date the only time he’s mentioned an event from his past was to Scott back in S1 and he brought up the Hale house fire to prove a point. He’s very guarded when it comes to both his emotions and his history unless it is somehow relevant to larger problems occurring within Beacon Hills. Perhaps more so guarded in the romance department since his last girlfriend turned out to be yet another psychotic killer. And whether he fully trusts other people to have his back is another matter entirely.
You see, Derek doesn’t have a great sense of self-worth; in fact he’s practically perfected the art of putting himself down. Given the amount of guilt on his shoulders it kind of makes sense that he isn’t a huge fan of himself, he has a long standing history of terrible decisions coming back to bite him in the worst ways imaginable after all. He gave into his uncle’s manipulation, first girlfriend died. He gave into a pretty face, majority of his family died. He let his sister return to Beacon hills alone, sister died. The list goes on. A lot of terrible events either occur around him or can be linked back to him at a later point and, more often than not, the events in question happen to the people closest to him. With that in mind, is it a huge surprise that he feels responsible for everything? As far as he’s concerned he gets people into these situations so he’s either got to get them out of their predicament or take the blame should the worst case scenario occur.
Naturally when you’ve got an amount of guilt like that on your shoulders, you start to think a little pessimistically. In Derek’s case his thoughts seem to translate directly into his actions. Over the course of the show Derek has been a bit of a punching bag character, normally this trait is shown in relation to the current villains although recently he has allowed a couple of the teenagers to verbally vent their anger at him. He’s there to beaten up and cut down and he just lets it happen. The majority of these scenes involve him effectively sacrificing his own life for the sake of protecting someone else, which sounds like a ‘heroic’ thing in theory but, given certain lines of his dialogue, it would appear that that is what Derek thinks he’s useful for. He notably never thinks twice about throwing his life on the line, he just sees a situation that could potentially be solved if a physical sacrifice is made and goes for it, as far as he seems to be concerned his primary use within the group is the role of either a distraction or a temporary meat shield. The notable example of this would be the Sheriff’s station scene from 3b where he and Chris Argent, a man who he hasn’t seen eye to eye with in the past, are handcuffed to a bench. When Derek hears a bomb timer ticking down in the nearby office he doesn’t break out of the cuffs to save himself, despite mentioning earlier on that he could do it if he wanted, instead he literally turns to shield Chris with his own body. He does it instinctively and he does it regardless of his earlier comment about how he wouldn’t help the other man out. Call it a combination of his clear protective streak compared with a complete disregard for his own safety.
Given said lack of regard for his own well-being and combined with a few questionable decisions on his part, there is an overhanging question on just how healthy Derek is on a mental level. After all he’s suffered a large number of losses within a short span of time, been tortured on several occasions and he’s faced several acts of betrayal on top of all of that. Allowing your traitorous, murderous uncle into your home after all of that doesn’t seem like the sanest decision to make, family or no. It’s a popular theory that Derek suffers from PTSD whether that’s true or not remains to be seen but he has recently had a somewhat questionable episode involving a dream sequence. During the finale of 3b Derek is shot by a certain returning character, upon seeing this specific shooter Derek essentially retreats into his own head for a bit. There’s a short dream sequence where he explains what just happened within the waking world to an imaginary version of Stiles and then proceeds to state that he isn’t certain whether he’s dreaming or not. While the scene ends with him coming back to reality the more interesting thing to note id that this is the first time that an event has effectively proved to be too much for Derek to take in. Whether he has a particular diagnosable problem or not he’s clearly reached a point where he can no longer push aside traumatic events and carry on as though they didn’t happen, he’s reached his limit in terms of stress.
Abilities/Powers: Derek currently possesses the basic strengths and weakness of a beta werewolf. The basis of which are essentially enhanced human abilities. Their senses are notably heightened which gives them a few perks. Sight, smell, hearing, presumably touch too although this sense has yet to really be delved into. So far on the show the senses of smell and hearing have been shown off in standard betas, the sight aspect had more to do with an alpha at the time although it does come with a red-tint for everyone during a ‘shift’. Hearing was the first to come into play way back in season one, it was shown that a werewolf can detect lies by listening to a person’s heartbeat. It does appear to be a focused ability though, preferably one utilised in a quiet room. The smell sense was shown off a little more recently; within 3b it was shown that a werewolf has the ability to smell lingering emotions. The example given was emotional distress. The catch will this ability seems to be that the amount they can smell depends on how strong the emotions were in the first place. As expected, along with the senses werewolves have increased physical capabilities. Speed, agility, strength. All of which have simply been shown in passing. Some examples would include Derek outrunning a police car, leaping for heights, and generally being able lift heavy objects. It’s a little self-explanatory on that point.
On top of those base abilities werewolves do have a little something up their sleeves. One of their more obvious abilities is their advanced healing capabilities. In most instances a werewolf can heal within seconds of the injury occurring. They’re even shown to mend broken bones with a couple of minutes. There are a couple of things that they cannot heal from though. Wolfsbane is the more obvious answer, it’s a poisonous plant plain and simple, it slows a werewolf down considerably until it eventually kills them upon reaching the heart. Another common example would be a wound from an Alpha, an injury from one of them naturally takes longer to heal. On the slightly happier side of pain though, sort of, werewolves additionally have the ability to take pain from others. A simple touch is all it takes. There is, of course, a downside to the pain pull, while taking a little bit of pain is fine, if a werewolf takes too much in one going it could potentially kill the ‘drainer’.
Last but not least, let’s talk about the shift. A beta’s shift is pretty much just a hairier version of their normal appearance. Most tend to grow out sideburn during the transformation along with a slightly altered hairline, Derek is one of the few who actually manages to lose hair in the process despite the sideburn part, where his eyebrows go will forever be a mystery. Along with the hair, werewolves will also grow claws in place of their human fingernails. An interesting but pointless bit of information is that Derek’s claws have recently changed colour, and he’s now one of the few ‘wolves with black claws instead of the clear sort. Finally there’s the eye colour, the basics are pretty simple, Red means an Alpha, Yelllow means an innocent Beta, Blue means that the beta has taken an innocent life. It should also be mentioned that a werewolf that is in control of their abilities should be able to achieve a partial shift. The partial shift can vary between ‘flashing’ their eye colour at something or lengthening their claws, these can be done independently without the rest of the transformation following afterwards.
Items/Weapons: Just the clothes on his back.
Sample Entry: I think this counts.
Sample Entry Two: And another previous in-game thing.
Contact Info:
Other Characters Played: N/A
Requested apartment: N/A
Character Name: Derek Hale
Canon: Teen Wolf
Canon Point: 3x24 – The Divine Move (Otherwise known as the final episode of season 3b.)
Background/History: Over here
Previous Game History: While life in Exitvoid, specifically in the city of Zelien, wasn’t as bad as it could have been for Derek, it wasn’t particularly great by any standard either. Aside from a fair amount of weight loss, the result of several weeks on the bare minimum amount of food followed by a week and a bit with nothing at all, the werewolf’s appearance hasn’t suffered from the less than pleasant challenges present by COMPASS. The physical damage healed, from the skin-crawling bugs to a fatal gunshot wound, it’s the mental damage that’s managed to linger.
Within a week of arriving in the city the cultists turned up for their first attempt at human sacrifices. That in itself wasn’t the problem for Derek, the thing that really got to him was the method of sacrifice that they had chosen, being burnt alive. Given the fact that the majority of his family was burnt to death in his childhood home, the idea of people suffering the same fate didn’t sit well with him to say the least. Throw in mind control to force people into burning themselves alive and it’s a bit of a worst case scenario for the guy. While he was left unaffected, the fact that Scott and Isaac were made the situation so much worse for him. Strangers burning he could have dealt with just fine, but not people he’s familiar with. While dealing with Scott was more or less fine, a little unsettling but overall an easy encounter, it was staying the night with a half-crazy Isaac that really shook him up. Trying to keep his then beta locked in a room with him while attempting to talk the teenager out of setting himself on fire was a bit of a challenge. Derek’s not the best at comforting talks on a good day; throw in one his nightmare scenarios and it’s an uphill struggle to avoid saying the wrong thing. While he did manage to push the event to the back of his mind eventually, things were awkward between him and Isaac from that point on. Awkward to the point where they barely crossed paths with one another, let alone spoke.
What’s worse than people setting themselves on fire? Facing a SAW-esque ‘game’ with a couple of strangers and believing that only one person can escape. At the time Derek and his companions had been under the impression that one of them could leave the room and simply bring back help for the remaining prisoners. The reality of the situation? Shrapnel bombs the moment Derek left the room. Needless to say, Derek feels guilty about being the one to escape the blast, regardless of the fact that the choice to send him out had been a group decision. As far as he’s concerned he’d been stuck in the room with a pair of humans, his guilt is justified. He would have healed from the damage done by the blast, he could have prevented on of his fellow prisoners from gaining a life-altering injury. In his mind, as illogical as it might sound, he feels responsible for two archers being rendered half blind. If he’d been the one to stay at least one of the others could have been spared. Hindsight is 20/20 though. While one of the women left the city shortly after the event, he couldn’t look the other in the face again.
While not necessarily a bad thing, Derek didn’t exactly appreciate the fact that he lost his werewolf powers for a week. Being human didn’t sit well with him, it made him feel vulnerable and surprisingly fragile. That said, given the fact that his powers were transferred to someone else, it did give him the motivation to actively offer assistance for once. Over the course of the full moon night he bonded to a certain extent with a werewolf from another world, one who had retained her powers, and strengthened his tentative friendship with her. One of the few friendships he actually had during his stay in the city. On the less pleasant side of things he also clashed heads with Scott, something that would go on to be a running theme between the pair of them, over ideas on how to keep the newly ‘formed’ werewolves from murdering everything that moved. Derek kept pushing the idea of pain as a way to keep the werewolves from shifting, Scott kept refusing the idea.
Several weeks later, upon finding out that the mystery books inside the campus library had decoded themselves, Derek pushed aside his more violent, head first line of thinking and decided to hit the books instead. From this point onward he notably started to stray away from his ‘fight first, ask questions later’ method of operation and instead went for a more logical route. Any quiet moment he could utilise between COMPASS’ experiments, he spent either in the library or in a generally quiet area of the campus reading over the lore of the city, attempting to theorise out the cultists’ plan along with Stiles. Not as odd a choice for company as it might initially appear.
The next key moment for Derek wasn’t for a fair number of weeks after the book decoding event. The campus grounds were transported to the ruined city of London. While it didn’t offer much in terms of character development for Derek, or mental scarring as the case may be, the main point here is that Derek had his ‘major’ death here. Upon hearing voices from the ‘Great Old ones’ Derek agreed to lead Stiles to them, just on the off chance that the teenager might have be capable of hearing the voices too. It went as well as expected. Just when they thought they were safe, Derek was bitten by one of the infected ‘residents’ of the ruined land. The infection was passed onto him and he quickly began to succumb to the virus. While he was quickly put down by Stiles, who managed to shoot him in the head before the transformation process could finish, the werewolf does regret the fact there had to be a shooting in the first place. He doesn’t mention it, knows all too well that the topic will cause an argument if brought up, but he does feel a little guilty over how things played out. He let his guard down, he was bitten, he forced a teenager to kill another living being.
Throughout the collapse of COMPASS Derek reverted to more of a self-preserving line of thinking. While he had no objections to helping those he met along the way, he didn’t go out of his way to find people in danger. He stuck close to Stiles, the first person he’d run into after the buildings come alive, until they were transported to COMPASS’ headquarters. Whilst there Derek wasted no time in pushing forward, passing through the tests one by one as quickly as possible without needlessly sacrificing someone else’s life. He waited long enough to meet up with the other Beacon Hills residents before heading home. Well, before heading to what he thought was home at any rate.
With the major events out the way I’ll touch upon the topic of relationship changes. For the most part Derek kept his connections within the city relatively small, a few of the people from Beacon Hills and a couple of select individuals outside of them. He wasn’t social by any means and if anything after the first couple of weeks he managed to become worse at interacting with other people. That didn’t stop him from talking to people who happened to start conversations with him but it did place a strain on his home-based connections.
The two relationships that underwent the most noticeable changes during his time in the city were his ones with Scott and Stiles. He and Scott suffered from numerous clashes on opinion, more so after the library started to decode itself. Scott had wanted to take action, to try and protect everyone; Derek had wanted to lay low for a little longer, to spend more time gathering specific details. It was a bit of a role reversal to say the least. The final straw was reached following an impromptu blood shower, Scott put his foot down on playing the hero and Derek essentially called him an idiot for rushing into the unknown. After that their contact was minimal at best, although they did come together to save a mutual acquaintance, even then it’s using the term ‘together’ extremely loosely though. They did not mend their ‘friendship’ before leaving the city.
In comparison to the downhill slope with Scott, his standing with Stiles had the opposite sort of development. Initially they fought, a lot and on most if not all of their interactions. It wasn’t until after their exploration of the recently discovered Egyptian cavern that they started to form a tentative allegiance. The more weeks that passed by, the closer they became. Derek assisted Stiles with research and attempted to teach him how to fight, Stiles provided food supplies right up until the city ran out of food and generally provided Derek with a little bit of company. Company which he was sorely lacking by the end of his stay in the city, seeing as the majority of his ‘friends’ had left the city limits earlier on.
All in all, Zelien didn’t change Derek to a huge extent; he wasn’t really there long enough for it to have completely broken him. Less than 23 weeks by the end of it all. It has however tweaked a couple of his canon interactions and it has added a little more weight to his already guilt-ridden shoulders. On the plus side it has taught him to be a little more patient, to use his time wisely and plan things out ahead of time, but in comparison it’s also dented his ability to really ‘bond’ with other people. On initial meetings at least. Seeing your friends leave shortly after finding them tends to put someone off the idea altogether after a while.
Personality: If there’s one thing that can be said about Derek, it’s that he’s come a long way from his initial appearance back in S1. He’s still not a very sociable person by any means but there has been a marked improvement over the course of the seasons. Despite what the fandom may have you believe, he’s perfectly capable of talking in full sentences and even extended ones from time to time, it’s just that he tends to have a little more emphasis on body language and facial expressions. He’s a quiet guy, not overly talkative but not silent either, and he does appear to prefer his own company as opposed to a large crowd. That doesn’t mean he’s socially inept though, in fact he’s actually quite adaptable when it comes to interacting with people. To give a couple of examples, he can turn on the charm and flirt with the best of them at a moment’s notice, a skill that seems to primarily be used for the sake of manipulating people, or he can pull the blank faced straight man for the sake of playing the ‘tough guy’ role, which admittedly tends to be his default expression. Following a toning down of his violent tendencies, and his general ‘kill everything’ line of thinking, he’s also perfectly capable of holding a civil conversation, even if the topic in question revolves around a point of view that he may disagree with. Overall he’s just more tolerant of people in general. It could be said that Derek’s come out of his shell in a way, while he still isn’t the sort to openly swap background stories and he’s certainly not the type of guy to talk about his feelings, he can at least uphold a general, everyday talk. Which is more than could be said for his social skills way back at the start of the show.
The interesting thing about Derek’s recent role change within the Beacon Hill’s supernatural group is that he’s settled into a mentor-like role despite his less than impressive teaching history. In the past he’s been very hit or miss at supplying useful information, literally to the point where he’s withheld useful titbits and made situations more difficult than they needed to be. Not to mention the fact that he likely put the entire population at risk due to his silent act. These days the werewolf is thankfully a little more open with sharing his knowledge amongst his acquaintances and allies. He still holds back on what he knows until someone actually asks or needs to know but he doesn’t hold out for half as long as he would have done in the past. If someone were to ask him a question, he would actually answer it instead of giving a vague holdover statement. It doesn’t make him a perfect mentor but it allows him to get the job done and, given his previously terrible attempt at being an Alpha, it’s a role that simply fits him by comparison. It’s also been a position that he’s been trying to fill since season 1, now he actually has a chance to teach Scott, to teach Stiles and everyone else involved. It’s another chance for him to actually be useful instead of relying solely on his ability to be a meat shield. Needless to say a lot of his information revolves around supernatural stories and his own experiences, the latter of which comes into play with both Scott and the former alpha twins who were temporarily under his wing. With Scott he notably teaches him about smelling lingering emotions, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, with the twins he goes into a speech about not giving up and pushing through the difficult times. For Derek it’s a matter of teaching from experience and turning potentially negative memories into something that will be helpful to others. Now, make no mistake, he’s not about to win any awards for this new role within the resident supernatural community, insulting your ‘students’ isn’t the best way to go, but he’s got a lot of information under his belt and he’s willing to try and give more detailed advice this time around. He’s willing to be more of a team player instead of the lonely guy standing off to the side. Again.
Trust is a complicated topic when it comes to Derek, and that’s putting it nicely, given his close history with matters of betrayal one would likely assume that he’d be through with trusting other people. That isn’t necessarily the case. You see, Derek has somewhat of a history of saying that he doesn’t trust certain people and then he usually ends up following their advice a few scenes later. Now, on the one hand this could be seen as straight up naivety, especially when his uncle is involved, or it could be seen as him simply being a guy of second chances in certain cases, such as with the former alpha twins.
In his uncle’s case, there’s a fair amount of history that logically should have put Derek off the idea of trusting him, his sister’s death, a point-blank warning to avoid trusting him and a few personal experiences with Peter’s manipulative personality. And yet Derek frequently takes his advice within the recent seasons, he doesn’t question his uncle’s motives and at one point actually allowed the man to stab him in the back of the neck with his mother’s claws. Now, to be fair to the character it’s clear that Derek doesn’t fully trust his uncle but for all his deeds in the past, he seems to give Peter a larger ‘benefit of the doubt’ than he really should be given. It could be argued that this is down to their familial connection, there are only a couple of Hales wandering about and Derek feels a sense of guilt over the death of his family. In his instance Derek generally seems to come across as naïve simply because of his seeming desire to keep a family member around.
The case of the twins is a little less surprising in comparison. While the twins did assist in forcing Derek to kill one of his betas, Boyd, they actually had a heel-turn character moment at the end of 3a. One of the twins even went so far as to give a warning to Derek, telling him that he had to leave town if he wanted to live. Whether that change of heart played a role in Derek’s decision to try and help the twins integrate into Scott’s pack or whether he simply saw some sort of comparison between himself and them is unclear. All we know is that during 3b, Derek offered up several pieces of advice to try and get on the resident alpha’s good side. In this instance he seems to be giving a clear-cut second chase to the pair, he places their pasts to one side and even states near the end that he’ll make sure to tell Lydia about the one of the twins dying as ‘the good guy’.
With all that in mind let’s make one thing clear, his trust primarily extends to current happenings and life or death situations; it does not extend to stories from his background. To date the only time he’s mentioned an event from his past was to Scott back in S1 and he brought up the Hale house fire to prove a point. He’s very guarded when it comes to both his emotions and his history unless it is somehow relevant to larger problems occurring within Beacon Hills. Perhaps more so guarded in the romance department since his last girlfriend turned out to be yet another psychotic killer. And whether he fully trusts other people to have his back is another matter entirely.
You see, Derek doesn’t have a great sense of self-worth; in fact he’s practically perfected the art of putting himself down. Given the amount of guilt on his shoulders it kind of makes sense that he isn’t a huge fan of himself, he has a long standing history of terrible decisions coming back to bite him in the worst ways imaginable after all. He gave into his uncle’s manipulation, first girlfriend died. He gave into a pretty face, majority of his family died. He let his sister return to Beacon hills alone, sister died. The list goes on. A lot of terrible events either occur around him or can be linked back to him at a later point and, more often than not, the events in question happen to the people closest to him. With that in mind, is it a huge surprise that he feels responsible for everything? As far as he’s concerned he gets people into these situations so he’s either got to get them out of their predicament or take the blame should the worst case scenario occur.
Naturally when you’ve got an amount of guilt like that on your shoulders, you start to think a little pessimistically. In Derek’s case his thoughts seem to translate directly into his actions. Over the course of the show Derek has been a bit of a punching bag character, normally this trait is shown in relation to the current villains although recently he has allowed a couple of the teenagers to verbally vent their anger at him. He’s there to beaten up and cut down and he just lets it happen. The majority of these scenes involve him effectively sacrificing his own life for the sake of protecting someone else, which sounds like a ‘heroic’ thing in theory but, given certain lines of his dialogue, it would appear that that is what Derek thinks he’s useful for. He notably never thinks twice about throwing his life on the line, he just sees a situation that could potentially be solved if a physical sacrifice is made and goes for it, as far as he seems to be concerned his primary use within the group is the role of either a distraction or a temporary meat shield. The notable example of this would be the Sheriff’s station scene from 3b where he and Chris Argent, a man who he hasn’t seen eye to eye with in the past, are handcuffed to a bench. When Derek hears a bomb timer ticking down in the nearby office he doesn’t break out of the cuffs to save himself, despite mentioning earlier on that he could do it if he wanted, instead he literally turns to shield Chris with his own body. He does it instinctively and he does it regardless of his earlier comment about how he wouldn’t help the other man out. Call it a combination of his clear protective streak compared with a complete disregard for his own safety.
Given said lack of regard for his own well-being and combined with a few questionable decisions on his part, there is an overhanging question on just how healthy Derek is on a mental level. After all he’s suffered a large number of losses within a short span of time, been tortured on several occasions and he’s faced several acts of betrayal on top of all of that. Allowing your traitorous, murderous uncle into your home after all of that doesn’t seem like the sanest decision to make, family or no. It’s a popular theory that Derek suffers from PTSD whether that’s true or not remains to be seen but he has recently had a somewhat questionable episode involving a dream sequence. During the finale of 3b Derek is shot by a certain returning character, upon seeing this specific shooter Derek essentially retreats into his own head for a bit. There’s a short dream sequence where he explains what just happened within the waking world to an imaginary version of Stiles and then proceeds to state that he isn’t certain whether he’s dreaming or not. While the scene ends with him coming back to reality the more interesting thing to note id that this is the first time that an event has effectively proved to be too much for Derek to take in. Whether he has a particular diagnosable problem or not he’s clearly reached a point where he can no longer push aside traumatic events and carry on as though they didn’t happen, he’s reached his limit in terms of stress.
Abilities/Powers: Derek currently possesses the basic strengths and weakness of a beta werewolf. The basis of which are essentially enhanced human abilities. Their senses are notably heightened which gives them a few perks. Sight, smell, hearing, presumably touch too although this sense has yet to really be delved into. So far on the show the senses of smell and hearing have been shown off in standard betas, the sight aspect had more to do with an alpha at the time although it does come with a red-tint for everyone during a ‘shift’. Hearing was the first to come into play way back in season one, it was shown that a werewolf can detect lies by listening to a person’s heartbeat. It does appear to be a focused ability though, preferably one utilised in a quiet room. The smell sense was shown off a little more recently; within 3b it was shown that a werewolf has the ability to smell lingering emotions. The example given was emotional distress. The catch will this ability seems to be that the amount they can smell depends on how strong the emotions were in the first place. As expected, along with the senses werewolves have increased physical capabilities. Speed, agility, strength. All of which have simply been shown in passing. Some examples would include Derek outrunning a police car, leaping for heights, and generally being able lift heavy objects. It’s a little self-explanatory on that point.
On top of those base abilities werewolves do have a little something up their sleeves. One of their more obvious abilities is their advanced healing capabilities. In most instances a werewolf can heal within seconds of the injury occurring. They’re even shown to mend broken bones with a couple of minutes. There are a couple of things that they cannot heal from though. Wolfsbane is the more obvious answer, it’s a poisonous plant plain and simple, it slows a werewolf down considerably until it eventually kills them upon reaching the heart. Another common example would be a wound from an Alpha, an injury from one of them naturally takes longer to heal. On the slightly happier side of pain though, sort of, werewolves additionally have the ability to take pain from others. A simple touch is all it takes. There is, of course, a downside to the pain pull, while taking a little bit of pain is fine, if a werewolf takes too much in one going it could potentially kill the ‘drainer’.
Last but not least, let’s talk about the shift. A beta’s shift is pretty much just a hairier version of their normal appearance. Most tend to grow out sideburn during the transformation along with a slightly altered hairline, Derek is one of the few who actually manages to lose hair in the process despite the sideburn part, where his eyebrows go will forever be a mystery. Along with the hair, werewolves will also grow claws in place of their human fingernails. An interesting but pointless bit of information is that Derek’s claws have recently changed colour, and he’s now one of the few ‘wolves with black claws instead of the clear sort. Finally there’s the eye colour, the basics are pretty simple, Red means an Alpha, Yelllow means an innocent Beta, Blue means that the beta has taken an innocent life. It should also be mentioned that a werewolf that is in control of their abilities should be able to achieve a partial shift. The partial shift can vary between ‘flashing’ their eye colour at something or lengthening their claws, these can be done independently without the rest of the transformation following afterwards.
Items/Weapons: Just the clothes on his back.
Sample Entry: I think this counts.
Sample Entry Two: And another previous in-game thing.