I rewatched Blade Trinity yesterday. Mostly for Hannibal King. He has the best lines. And a little for Abigail Whistler, because she is a badass and so so gorgeous. Callum Keith Rennie was there, and that is always a plus. Also explosions and vampires (/^^^\)
What surprised me a lot, was how unrepentant and unaffected Blade was about killing humans, even the police who stormed his base to arrest him. He is the hero of the film afterall. That so not would fly today. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
On one hand, heroes should have morals, because 'with great power..' and all that, but this set in stone 'Do not kill' leads to implausible fight scenes, stupid deaths when the bad guys accidentally kill each other of themselves because plot demands that they die but the good guys can't be the ones killing them, and endless stalemates with the boss villain coming back over and over.
To get to the actual reason I'm writing this:
After watching the film, I went to read fics I had bookmarked way back when. Those surprised me even more. It's been years since I've read any Blade fic, and during that time I've apparently become more aware of problematic elements in fics. And I've gotten even more picky about what I read.
I'm sort of ashamed for the back-then!me for liking some of those fics, because of the blatant bashing of the female characters, especially Abigail. She did nothing wrong in the canon, and she was noticeably better in hand-to-hand combat than Hannibal King, but in fics she was portrayed as a bad leader, nowhere near as good of a fighter as King and/or the bitch that betrays King.
Either there has been more discussion of how women are portrayed in fic, or I only started to see it sometime after I left the Supernatural fandom back in, IDK, winter 2008-2009. Because Flying Spaghetti Monster knows, that fandom loves the women in the show. [/sarcasm]
I would like to think that how women are portrayed in fic has become more of a visible topic in the western TV/film fandom. That vilifying, erasing and fridging women doesn't get overlooked and ignored so much.
But it's not all sunshine and kittens.. ( Vague spoilers for Avengers, Thor and The Losers. Spoilers for Inception & Spartacus season 2 )
Actually, now that I think about this whole 'how women are treated in fanfic' -issue, I remember the fic and a comment to it that clued me in.
It was a Die Hard 4.0 series, and the fic in question was fourth or fifth part. John McClane was leading a team of hackers who worked in preventing and investigating cybercrime. There was a scene where a female OC came to their office, was obnoxiously insistent about something, I think, and one of the hackers, IIRC, the token female in the team, Nana-chan, attacked her and beat her up and the other characters just let it happen. [Including McClane. Who, seriously, is not the type to let women be beat up and do nothing.]
Someone commented that they were uncomfortable with the scene, and the writer of the fic answered along the lines 'Well, you are, of course, entitled to your opinion,' making it sound like they were being magnanimous for 'allowing' the commenter their opinion. The whole exchange made me uncomfortable and start to pay more attention to what I read.
What surprised me a lot, was how unrepentant and unaffected Blade was about killing humans, even the police who stormed his base to arrest him. He is the hero of the film afterall. That so not would fly today. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
On one hand, heroes should have morals, because 'with great power..' and all that, but this set in stone 'Do not kill' leads to implausible fight scenes, stupid deaths when the bad guys accidentally kill each other of themselves because plot demands that they die but the good guys can't be the ones killing them, and endless stalemates with the boss villain coming back over and over.
To get to the actual reason I'm writing this:
After watching the film, I went to read fics I had bookmarked way back when. Those surprised me even more. It's been years since I've read any Blade fic, and during that time I've apparently become more aware of problematic elements in fics. And I've gotten even more picky about what I read.
I'm sort of ashamed for the back-then!me for liking some of those fics, because of the blatant bashing of the female characters, especially Abigail. She did nothing wrong in the canon, and she was noticeably better in hand-to-hand combat than Hannibal King, but in fics she was portrayed as a bad leader, nowhere near as good of a fighter as King and/or the bitch that betrays King.
Either there has been more discussion of how women are portrayed in fic, or I only started to see it sometime after I left the Supernatural fandom back in, IDK, winter 2008-2009. Because Flying Spaghetti Monster knows, that fandom loves the women in the show. [/sarcasm]
I would like to think that how women are portrayed in fic has become more of a visible topic in the western TV/film fandom. That vilifying, erasing and fridging women doesn't get overlooked and ignored so much.
But it's not all sunshine and kittens.. ( Vague spoilers for Avengers, Thor and The Losers. Spoilers for Inception & Spartacus season 2 )
Actually, now that I think about this whole 'how women are treated in fanfic' -issue, I remember the fic and a comment to it that clued me in.
It was a Die Hard 4.0 series, and the fic in question was fourth or fifth part. John McClane was leading a team of hackers who worked in preventing and investigating cybercrime. There was a scene where a female OC came to their office, was obnoxiously insistent about something, I think, and one of the hackers, IIRC, the token female in the team, Nana-chan, attacked her and beat her up and the other characters just let it happen. [Including McClane. Who, seriously, is not the type to let women be beat up and do nothing.]
Someone commented that they were uncomfortable with the scene, and the writer of the fic answered along the lines 'Well, you are, of course, entitled to your opinion,' making it sound like they were being magnanimous for 'allowing' the commenter their opinion. The whole exchange made me uncomfortable and start to pay more attention to what I read.
