I haven't read a lot of Mulder/krycek but from what I remember, a lot of it was tension that began from their physical altercations together. The sex would definitely qualify as rough sex, and maybe hate sex, but what I read wasn't dub con or non con. I haven't heard about Mulder/krycek stories promoting domestic abuse, but maybe also because I didn't come across those particular discussions.

Yeah, for me both watching and reading, the sexual tension came from the physical contact (and the glances). As Rhyme points out, Krycek killed Mulder's dad - that's a pretty fucked up relationship to begin with. :/ And following what Rhyme said, it seems there weren't really discussions about it much. It seems a different fandom atmosphere now. Which is interesting.

I didn't really get into the X-Files fandom and I don't ship Sterek, but... this keeps getting brought up by the trolls in the Vampire Diaries fandom in the form of "Damon's a rapist." Um... Damon's a vampire. I'm sorry your generation is used to them sparkling and moody, but he's an unapologetic vampire. Caroline threw herself at him and the only thing he did was compel her to forget he bit her. But, it keeps getting brought up. My answer is always, he is who he is. If you don't like the ship/don't think the ship works, whatever. Ignore it. Don't try to go against who his character is (and in this case, let me know if/when Derek apologizes for anything in canon) or make him some fluffy character with only the name in common with the actual character. That's just my opinion, though.

And while I know nothing about Vampire Diaries (not specifics anyway), it seems to me that you can say Damon's a rapist (if he is, from what you said it sounds more like some level of dubcon rather than rape)...and still, er, like him? Like those of us who like villains (Magneto in my case, Loki for many people I follow) and like them despite or even because of their flaws, without apologizing or trying to wash away the very things that make them a villain (or a vampire...or hell, Sam and Dean have done some awful, awful things). So, with Sterek, yes, Derek has some issues so he's violent and if they were to be canon on screen, the show would need to address things like that (and as I mentioned, it seems Derek has stopped with the violence mostly anyway), but I don't think just shipping Sterek is promoting domestic abuse.

That's kind of rambly, but, I do tend to agree with what you said.

The M/K relationship is kind of weird as far as relationships go, especially considering Krycek killed Mulder's father and -- in the beginning at least -- was actively pursuing Mulder's death. So in the scenes they were actually together after Krycek turned against him after being partnered with him, Mulder is *always* hostile to the point of violence.

The curious thing many of us noticed is that in those scenes Krycek never fights back. He allows Mulder to punch him or attack him or whatever, and you'll recall that one scene when they're locked up together in Tunguska is the one and only time Krycek says "Don't touch me." But that's the only time.

Of course, there's also the curious moment of the kiss. It's hard to figure out where they were going with it, and even all these years later it's still open to interpretation.

The way I've always seen it is that Krycek does a penance of sorts by allowing himself to be beat up by Mulder for everything he's done, because there was a part of him that fell in love/became interested/became obsessed (however people choose to interpret it) with Mulder all those years ago and could never reconcile the fact that he was forced to go against Mulder.

As far as my involvement with the ship goes, I can't recall a time when being accepting of/promoting abuse ever factored into the relationship and was talked about, at least not on the mailing lists I'm a member of. The nature of their "relationship" was always accepted because Krycek was a bad guy. I suppose it was expected of Mulder to a degree; he was always violent around Alex. Is Derek a bad guy? Does he use violence to threaten Stiles?

I think the reason we still ship it and our version of events (i.e. Krycek had some deep, emotional attachment to him, be it adversarial or respect or love) is that moment in the last episode when Mulder hallucinates Krycek's ghost, who places his hand on Mulder's shoulder. Why have that with the guy Mulder is supposed to hate? We always thought Mulder had some sort of attachment likewise to Krycek.

All that being said, today's fandom culture is much more...hmmm...unforgiving when it comes to anything that might be considered racist, or sexist, or all the other things White Knighters complain about. We simply didn't think of it as much in the old days. In fact, the idea of M/K being abusive never occurred to me until this post. Their relationship just was. Curious.

Haha, yeah, that kiss is still strange. I always figured it was meant to be a Russian brotherly kiss of some kind. Whatevs. I will use that kiss to my own headcanon liking. :D

Derek isn't a bad guy (though they kind of think he is at the beginning). As for using violence to threaten...technically, yes. But could it be counteracted by the times when Derek has helped save Stiles' life? It seems obvious from that, that Derek doesn't plan on following through with his death threats. I haven't seen a lot of it yet, but the violence, from what little I know, seems to be part defense mechanism and part he's a werewolf. I imagine a lot of the monsters S&D hunt who don't kill humans for fun (think Lenore, Benny) probably still act violently in general, and particularly if they're being threatened. Does that make it right for Derek to threaten a 16 year old? No. But he's not some big bad, either. He's...complicated. (While the emotion is different, I can't help but think of the Dean and Cas scene when Cas beats on Dean, basically. Then again, pretty much everyone but me hated that scene so maybe my own mindset is skewed.)

And yes, I think you're completely right about that last scene. Also, I really don't think Mulder wanted Krycek dead when Skinner shoots him. (GAH! My heart. Memories.) So that keeps the ship "alive" (so to speak) for me.

Finally, I think you're right about the general climate. Like, when I think back to fics, there were a lot of M/K that had violence but most warnings were only for noncon or BDSM. Versus AO3 now with the myriad of tag warnings. Generally, I think its good. Talking about racism and dv and such IS a good thing. But when people suggest that simply shipping Sterek is problematic or promoting domestic violence, I can't help but be like "Sigh, this generation". (Because, let's not forget, just because you find something hot in a fic, doesn't mean you want to do it in RL. So I can't help but adopt that same attitude towards shipping Sterek, even if yes, the past violence is bad.)

You know the other day I saw people saying that shipping Sterek makes you racist? Apparently because they're both white, if you ship them with anyone other than Boyd, Scott or Danny you're being racist by default. Then someone said that people don't ship Scott with them because he has a wonky jaw. I tried pointing out that they don't ship Scott because Stiles and Derek are more interesting and SCOTT IS SO BORING/ANNOYING OHMYGOD, but I don't think they agreed.

Basically, I think tumblr takes offense at everything they can. However, I personally don't like the violence between Derek and Stiles. Mostly because Derek is just so much more powerful than Stiles (though I do think that if Stiles were a werewolf he'd give as good as he got, because underneath all the adorableness he's a bloodthirsty little fucker).

Power differences in relationships are always tricky, but there's a definite difference between BDSM and assaulting someone. What Derek does to Stiles is physically abuse him and it's definitely without his consent. I do think Stiles craves/gets off on danger, but again there's a difference between that and Derek using his enhanced strength to slap him about.

I'd like to think if they were to attempt any kind of stable relationship they'd need to address all this. But if the point of the fic is that the violence and lust between them is all fucked up and twisted then I don't really mind it.

Yeah, I've seen that one, too. And sure, I do think it's a problem that generally, we as fandom tend to ship the white guys (or girls or het couple) together, even when there are POCs. Which, I think comes from the fact that the main characters are usually white (unfortunately). But I know several people who ship Stiles/Danny and Danny/Jackson...but yeah, there's no way shipping Sterek in and of itself is racist. *sighs*

But Scott has a wonky jaw? First off, what? Not that I've noticed. And second, for me, anyway, Scott and Allison are ridiculously adorable and I love Scott and Stiles as BFFs, so I'm not inclined to ship Scott/Stiles for those reasons. And yeah, for a main character, Scott is not as interesting as the secondarys. More's the shame, really.

And yes, yes, to all of that. I don't think the act of shipping Sterek promotes domestic abuse (or racism), but the show, were it to make it canon, would have to address it. Fanfic...well, it depends on how in depth the author goes, I guess. I fully admit, I'm not interested in all my PWPs giving a lecture on dv. And you are so right about Stiles if he were a wolf. He'd be a bad ass wolf. And I also tend to think of Stiles as a baby Dean - willing to do *whatever* it takes to protect those he loves, even if that's legally or morally wrong. (And at the same time, he's still strong enough to turn down the bite. Gosh, I love Stiles.) But yes, everything you said.

Also, here's something that bugs me...now again, I haven't seen the episode, but there's a gif set where Dad Stilinski blames Stiles for killing his mom. And yet, there's no one I've seen talking about that scene. It's just always "I love Stiles and his dad, they have the best relationship!" And that bothers me because you NEVER tell a child something like that is their fault - I don't care if you're drunk or angry or what, that is unacceptable. But it's interesting that doesn't get play. Apparently, my triggers aren't everyone else's triggers.

My problem with shipping Sterek is that in the show I don't see it at all. I read it because there's a huge amount and a lot of rec lists, which is great for me because I can't be arsed to actually dive into the fandom myself. But Stiles is my favourite character and so i'll pretty much read him with anyone. I even read and like Stiles/Danny, even though i'm pretty much the only person who thinks he's a dick in the show (everyone just kind of gapes at me when I say I'm not partial to Danny). Idgaf what gender/ethnicity/whatever a character is as long as I find them interesting. They don't even have to be young and/or pretty (as evidenced by one of my absolute favourite ships, James May/Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear).

I didn't have a clue about Scott's jaw either. But let's imagine for a highly improbable second that I find Scott interesting - I STILL wouldn't ship him with Stiles or Derek. Alison and Isaac, yes.

YES! That's exactly how I see Stiles. I love everything about him, except his obsession with Lydia (which is creepy and I hope like hell they get over in the next season. I'm not getting my hopes up mind, because Jeff said there was going to be a Stiles/Lydia/Jackson storyline before Jackson left. Also I don't think the Stiles/Lydia thing comes off as creepy to men as it does to women).

No-one discusses Papa Stilinski saying that because it was a hallucination. (Look away now if you don't want more spoilers.) Just before Stiles goes to Lydia's birthday party he finds out that his dad's been fired because of all the trouble Stiles has been getting into. At the party everyone drinks punch which makes them hallucinate. Stiles sees his dad saying those things. It's a heartbreaking scene, but yeah. He never really said it.

I've actually never watched the X-Files (crazy, I know... it's on my to-do list... right up there with Buffy, which I've also never seen... whoops), but I have finally gotten into Teen Wolf, and I'm a Sterek shipper, and just... yeah, in the context of a romantic/sexual relationship, they would have serious issues to work out. I have thinky thoughts on the different dynamic between them at the beginning of the show and by the end of S2, and on the reasons for that shift, and on Derek's state of mind in general, but since you haven't seen the episode with the wheel slamming yet, I'm guessing you haven't seen both seasons all the way through yet? And I don't want to spoil you for anything, so. I'll hold off with my ramblings until I'm sure that I've got the green light to ramble, aha.

LOL, that's okay. I've never seen all of Buffy, myself. Never could get into it. *shrugs*

As for the show, I give you free rein to ramble! While I haven't seen every episode, I know generally most of the giant plot points so I'm not too worried about being spoiled. I just kind of jumped into fandom (damn you, tumblr!) before I've had a chance to watch most of the show (that's my Christmas break project). I'm very curious as to how the dynamic has changed.

How do you think how Derek treated Stiles differs from how he would have treated an annoying younger brother in his family?

I only brushed past XF, but in my general opinion any violence in a relationship meant to hurt (no matter how it was actually received by the other party) is a pretty bad sign.

Sure, absolutely. And when I think of Sterek, as I said to someone above, if the show were to ever make it canon (HA) the show would need to address it rather than retcon it. But if the violence occurred in the past rather than while in the relationship, does that make it different? Now, in XF, I find it often pervades the entire relationship (particularly if someone is writing a canon-based fic during S4-S6 where the above references come from), which is why I was curious how it was handled (apparently it wasn't). But I think, that with Sterek, the very act of shipping the two characters isn't supporting domestic violence. And that they can have a relationship that doesn't involve violence (and it seems the violence has died down).