Missing the point: Vampire Slayer style
Jan. 28th, 2014 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThere's a fic series where Clint Barton is the Slayer, and I just cannot get past the first page, not because writing, but because of how wrong headed it is to make the Slayer a guy.
I mean, they mocked the idea within the series, with Andrew saying how a guy would be cooler. And imitator series have tried making the Slayer a guy and been really really bad. And the idea of the Chosen One being male? Not exactly rocking any boats. So why flip the gender back to guys doing violence, unless they're actively trying to prop up patriarchy.
The Slayer was a girl, in canon, because she could be both bait and trap. She would look small weak defenceless tasty, and then get the stake out. Make a guy like Clint Barton a Slayer? Who would be dumb enough to read him as weak? No bait, no trap.
Clint's socio-economic background makes him more of a Xander, if his parents lived, alcohol and all. He's the working class guy who everyone figures will end up going to the bad. And archery was never a Slayer power, it was skill and practice, and staying out of range of the super strong enemy. Clint is scoobie gang, not Slayer.
Natasha though, she's classic Slayer. Tiny small pretty bait, who gives the enemy very little time to notice their mistake. Raised by people who didn't care about her humanity and just made of her a weapon, she isn't Buffy, but she is the classic Slayer made by the Watchers. Though I'm kind of tempted to have her raised that way and then not Chosen, and instead of becoming a Watcher, she leaves the system and becomes independent. Depends how wed to the high school AU age range you'd want to be.
Coulson is a Watcher, to a point, but I don't think he's the Giles. Giles was the repentant sinner, adhering to Council law because he screwed up so bad before. Coulson is as far as I know the by the book trust the system guy, which is another classic Council type. Without the parental issues though he hasn't inherited his place, so he's not a Wesley or from a Watcher family, which would require a slightly new origin for him. Watchers that recruit are not quite the same Watchers. Or you can invent him some ancestors. If his mother was a first gen Watcher who was never Chosen then he could grok the whole Watcher system as basically looking after his mom. For instance.
But there's no Captain America in the Watcher system, which would be a giant difference. Coulson needs to be a Paladin who doesn't know it, someone emulating his hero who doesn't see he has become one.
I think this fic I'm not reading had vampire Coulson? What, he's Angel now? I do not see it. What's the metaphor there? Unless it was a simple fixit move, and Coulson wakes up after his heroics having to deal with darkness. But what makes him and his the leeches with no self control, as opposed to the overly controlling Watchers?
... Clint usually serves as the chaos to Coulson's excess of order, in fic. Coulson is mr coverup in the movie canon, so someone who would swan in and try and show everyone at once, like Ethan does with the large scale spells, would be another kind of equal opposite. So now I have the odd idea of Tony Stark as Ethan Rayne, which on many levels does not work at all, but having them both in mind is pretty.
Guys as Slayers though... when it's girl Slayers being pounced by guy vampires in alleys and then fighting them all off it's a metaphor about resistance to the dominant patriarchal power that sees them as available to slake their biological urges on. When it's a guy being pounced? Either it's other guys, when it's just the model of masculinity whereby they solve problems by violence, and the admittedly useful side where it makes monsters and wrecks lives, or it's girl vampires, and it's male violence against monstrous women yet again. It gets skewed ugly real easy. Angel being the monster first and trying to deal with it by eliminating other monsters, that was mostly noir about how that worked really badly. Give a guy super strength and it does not, on the whole, improve things for him.
So for all I know this fic could be awesome. I haven't read it, I've read the tags at most, I have no idea. But I just can't get started on it because the simple gender flip for me undermines all the basic point of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
It could very easily have a different basic point about a different set of inequalities (because in the end it's about power). But by using specifically Buffy to illustrate them, it loses me on page one, because that was girl power, and they don't get to give it back to the guys.
I mean, they mocked the idea within the series, with Andrew saying how a guy would be cooler. And imitator series have tried making the Slayer a guy and been really really bad. And the idea of the Chosen One being male? Not exactly rocking any boats. So why flip the gender back to guys doing violence, unless they're actively trying to prop up patriarchy.
The Slayer was a girl, in canon, because she could be both bait and trap. She would look small weak defenceless tasty, and then get the stake out. Make a guy like Clint Barton a Slayer? Who would be dumb enough to read him as weak? No bait, no trap.
Clint's socio-economic background makes him more of a Xander, if his parents lived, alcohol and all. He's the working class guy who everyone figures will end up going to the bad. And archery was never a Slayer power, it was skill and practice, and staying out of range of the super strong enemy. Clint is scoobie gang, not Slayer.
Natasha though, she's classic Slayer. Tiny small pretty bait, who gives the enemy very little time to notice their mistake. Raised by people who didn't care about her humanity and just made of her a weapon, she isn't Buffy, but she is the classic Slayer made by the Watchers. Though I'm kind of tempted to have her raised that way and then not Chosen, and instead of becoming a Watcher, she leaves the system and becomes independent. Depends how wed to the high school AU age range you'd want to be.
Coulson is a Watcher, to a point, but I don't think he's the Giles. Giles was the repentant sinner, adhering to Council law because he screwed up so bad before. Coulson is as far as I know the by the book trust the system guy, which is another classic Council type. Without the parental issues though he hasn't inherited his place, so he's not a Wesley or from a Watcher family, which would require a slightly new origin for him. Watchers that recruit are not quite the same Watchers. Or you can invent him some ancestors. If his mother was a first gen Watcher who was never Chosen then he could grok the whole Watcher system as basically looking after his mom. For instance.
But there's no Captain America in the Watcher system, which would be a giant difference. Coulson needs to be a Paladin who doesn't know it, someone emulating his hero who doesn't see he has become one.
I think this fic I'm not reading had vampire Coulson? What, he's Angel now? I do not see it. What's the metaphor there? Unless it was a simple fixit move, and Coulson wakes up after his heroics having to deal with darkness. But what makes him and his the leeches with no self control, as opposed to the overly controlling Watchers?
... Clint usually serves as the chaos to Coulson's excess of order, in fic. Coulson is mr coverup in the movie canon, so someone who would swan in and try and show everyone at once, like Ethan does with the large scale spells, would be another kind of equal opposite. So now I have the odd idea of Tony Stark as Ethan Rayne, which on many levels does not work at all, but having them both in mind is pretty.
Guys as Slayers though... when it's girl Slayers being pounced by guy vampires in alleys and then fighting them all off it's a metaphor about resistance to the dominant patriarchal power that sees them as available to slake their biological urges on. When it's a guy being pounced? Either it's other guys, when it's just the model of masculinity whereby they solve problems by violence, and the admittedly useful side where it makes monsters and wrecks lives, or it's girl vampires, and it's male violence against monstrous women yet again. It gets skewed ugly real easy. Angel being the monster first and trying to deal with it by eliminating other monsters, that was mostly noir about how that worked really badly. Give a guy super strength and it does not, on the whole, improve things for him.
So for all I know this fic could be awesome. I haven't read it, I've read the tags at most, I have no idea. But I just can't get started on it because the simple gender flip for me undermines all the basic point of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
It could very easily have a different basic point about a different set of inequalities (because in the end it's about power). But by using specifically Buffy to illustrate them, it loses me on page one, because that was girl power, and they don't get to give it back to the guys.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 07:48 pm (UTC)But if they meet each other... ;)
I have this bunny with Clint, Buffy, and Normal Again. In a world with no slayer or vampires, but with superpowered people - and heroes who are not superpowered but rely on muscle and training and skills, like Clint is - Buffy, waking from her coma, finds a new path and a way to help save the world. It's slightly more complex than that, but.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-30 11:30 pm (UTC)And in the comics, there are Avengers with superhuman strength, some of whom also fly; magic-users; and Avengers with shrinking powers for infiltration.
Of course, with Natasha on the team, Clint isn't the apparently frail one; but she already had her Slayer-esque moment in Iron Man 2, so this is perhaps a fan trying to lift Clint up.
But since Natasha is already that kind of role, it's like making Riley the Slayer. I wonder if it's at least amusing crack.