I think I'm going to be sick

[gryphonsegg]

I know I shouldn't get this worked up over somebody's stupid AU fanfic, but . . .


Somebody made a Supernatural Claymore AU in which the organization just kept on using male warriors instead of switching over to female warriors because the male turned into awakened beings and went on killing sprees too easily. In this AU, Dean Winchester is the #2 warrior of his generation. His title is "The Righteous King"-- as we used to say when I was a kid, BARF!

I firmly believe that the only acceptable crossover between Supernatural and Claymore is one that involves the Winchester brothers attacking the Claymore women and getting their asses handed to them.

Comments

[surrealistdreamer]

Ugh gross. Also someone obviously missed the point of Claymore.

[gryphonsegg]

I'm sure someone could come up with a more misogynistic crossover concept, but I'm having difficulty imagining how.

[surrealistdreamer]

In this same AU all the female characters are hookers?

[gryphonsegg]

. . . You did it. Your imagination is a fearful thing.

You know what really makes this even weirder? Before I discovered that stupidly offensive AU, I had used the dress-up game to make a Claymore Cecil. Of course, I placed his backstory in the earliest period of the organization, when they were still using all male warriors, and tried to make everything fit within Claymore canon. Because I didn't want to see male characters take over the entire Claymore concept forever and ever; I just wanted to make an Awakened Being Cecil and maybe have him interact with the Claymore canon characters. Also, not that long ago, there was a post from a gay Claymore fan who convinced his boyfriend to cosplay as his first gen warrior OC ("the only bear Claymore!"), and I thought this was awesome. These guys were not making any kind of insinuation that the entire concept should be all about male characters instead of female, they were just doing their own thing.

But now I have really mixed feelings about any male Claymore stuff, because I'm feeling paranoid about where to draw a line between Cecil the All-Seeing and Dean the Righteous King (that title-- Barf, barf, BARF!) and how to avoid crossing it. Because Claymore is one of the few stories in its genre that is about women, and it should always be about women. Adding male characters is not the same thing as erasing female characters and having male characters take over the concept entirely . . . but I'm very averse to doing anything that might lead to the latter or even be mistaken for approving of the latter.

[surrealistdreamer]

I understand that. That's honestly why I didn't reblog the Bear!Claymore thing because while not completely shitty it still feels kinda...wrong ya know? Maybe I should draw Desert Grey Girls as Claymore characters. What would everyone's titles be?

[gryphonsegg]

Well, I'd be hesitant about that tbh because the transformation process give all the warriors blond hair and silver eyes, regardless of original coloring. Doing that to a black character seems wrong, but doing that to the white characters from a certain source while leaving the black characters from the same source out of it also seems fraught with racial issues in its own way. (I think one of the canon warriors, Renee might be black, or at least it's easy for me to imagine her that way because of her hairstyle and the details of her face-- If that's intentional on the artist's part, then the transformation process clearly still made her blonde and might have lightened her skin too. And the other characters don't necessarily have to be white. Teresa did have that scene where she talked about how she used to have black hair and getting turned blonde shook her sense of self/identity. But that's from the original canon, and the canon creator is Japanese, so the "Claymores all get turned blonde" thing is easier to accept than it would be if a white person wrote the same thing.

Basically, you should draw Claymores, but I don't think you should use the cast of Desert Grey in that project. Besides, you already have that non-comic from a while back with just Janet as a Claymore-- you executed that idea well, and I think "just Janet and maybe Kathy, no one else" is the way to go if you mix Desert Grey with Claymore.

[surrealistdreamer]

Hurm I didn't think through the implications of that too hard. Okay.

[gryphonsegg]

I think you should draw the Claymore characters.

The reason I wanted to make a Claymore Cecil in the first place was that I wanted to try out the blond hair options, but I didn't want to make a naturally blond Cecil because the trainwreck of White Vale put me off the idea entirely. So I thought I could make an Awakened Cecil with lavender skin and a Claymore Cecil with skin that's darker than you'd expect on a blond . . . and then freakin' Claymore Dean appeared on my dash, and I recoiled not only from that but from male Claymores in general. But I couldn't say that my Claymore Cecil was a girl because he's a canonically gay character and "make him a girl in the American dub to appease the homophobes" has its own history. So now I'm just like, "Well, crap, what do I do now?"

[surrealistdreamer]

I dunno man. Maybe leave it be until this blows over and put it out in the world when it's not a trend anymore.