#im only on s2 though nobody say shit to me ik what happens but i don't wanna acknowledge it

[wttcsms]

cw yandere themes, stalking

thinking about a superhero au that's similar to the setup in "the boys" where superheroes are celebrities, backed by a company/management team + you are promoted to be character's handler. you're the one who finalizes his schedule, tells him where to go, accesses all the classified files that detail the missions he goes on (+ sometimes even accompany him to said missions). you know the ins + outs of his life (career-wise, he's doing fantastic; does well in polls, the public loves him, and his reddit snark page is itching for him to do anything they can complain about. his private life... well, he doesn't really have a life outside his job — or so it seems). he's a very black noir inspired superhero; no one knows what he looks like underneath his mask; no one knows anything about him since he stays consistently covered in his nearly indestructible suit that only emphasizes the flex of his muscles and the tightness of his abs. he never talks, which took some getting used to. you thought that was just his bit for the public, the whole "silent killer" persona, but he only nods or shakes his head when you're going over his itinerary for the day. you eventually get used to his silence & you two sort of come up with your own secret language. you can't see through his mask, but sometimes the two of you will look at each other when something happens and it's like you just know what he's trying to communicate + vice versa.

being a superhero's handler means your own private life — or lack thereof — is pretty boring. you don't have a lot of time for anything, but you finally get a chance to go out on a date. but it's just your luck that your date turns out to be a small-time villain on the side. when you think things are going to take a turn for the worst, who shows up to your rescue?

your superhero, of course.

you don't question how he knows where you're at; you're too busy being grateful for his help. you can't see the gleeful expression he's wearing under the mask when you're cooing words of praise at him. you look so cute, he thinks. you're always cute — when you're kicking off your heels after you get home from a long day of work, when you're slipping off your blouse so you can hop in the shower, when you're rushing to get to work on time in the morning, when you're hiding away in one of the many break rooms inside the company's building.

that night proves to be a series of surprises for you; first, you literally went on a date with an actual criminal. and second, you actually hear character speak for the first time ever. he has a nice voice, deep and a bit gravelly — probably due to the fact that he chooses not to speak most of the time. but it's what he says that almost wipes your grateful smile off your face.

"don't go out with anyone. you're supposed to be mine, remember?"

[therewas-a-girl]

I was watching s1 of Arrow, bc it's on Netflix here (FINALLY) and... what happened to Laurel? She was so good in s1. WHAT WENT WRONG AFTER S1???????

Short answer - the writers think women are interchangeable, not really deserving to be treated as people and, really its easier to replace them (with the added bonus of the story they can squish out of their gruesome deaths), than say, spend brainpower to write them as humans, and allow the audience to built connections and empathy with them… and not just the whoever they are there to prop up. 

long answer… is longer, and a mess:

one of the ideas i have - one of them - is that, the whole idea behind the end of season one was that tommy’s death would affect both oliver and laurel. oliver by getting him not to kill anymore and laurel by being the ‘tragedy/loss/pain’ that would push her into becoming the Black Canary. 

(this is my intuition just from the way their journey was going, like, by following the narrative etc, and by knowing how these writers think, a little. like, what to them is the birth of a hero: death, loss tragedy. it bores me, generally, sure, but i know it when i see it.) 

i dont know what happened, but they seemed to change their minds - maybe halfway. or after s1 ended?… idk. and started casting calls for the Canary. tore laurel down to the freaking bone - and used her character to prop other characters, general at the expense of her development. or rather, her opportunities to bond the audience with her, build sympathy for her. because all those opportunities were used to build sympathy for whoever she was facing against.

(seriously, they gave laurel in s2 some emotional reactions to stuff that are so far from human emotions, i can hardly conceive of it. and im not talking about her cleaving at sara or oliver by the way. i think she had all the right in the world to feel all the rage in the world. im talking about how all her emotional reactions were framed as wrong/bad/over the top! as opportunities for oliver to act like a self righteous dick, his behavior framed by the story as ‘right’ and ‘just’. 

(i will never be over the fact that he said, to her face and utterly unironically, ‘i am still standing here, i have loved you half my life but im done running after you’ like it was an accusation, while she, and everyone else, had just found out - in laurels own home… at a dinner he was not invited to… - that he and sara were boning. like… “im fucking your sister, dropping you neck deep into the shit that is one of the most gruesome deja vu experiences in the history of ever, but how dare you be angry, you dont know whats happening in my life right now!!!! that’s obviously more important than YOUR feeling!!!”   meanwhile, im standing here o_O ???? is this walking dick foreal????), 

laurel framed as selfish? opportunity for her to apologize to sara instead of, idk, both of them forgiving each other for the fucked up things they did to each other???

[lmao i still laugh my ass off at how, in needing to frame sara less negatively for the whole ‘sleeping with her sister’s boyfriend’ thing - a gross device they used in s1 to to build sympathy for laurel; the writers did a whole ‘i saw oliver first’ thing with her, like that somehow means sara ‘planted the flag on him’ and that means something??? or gave her some sort of ‘get out of jail free card’ that essentially turned LAUREL in the boyfriend-thieving sister. LMFAO  how the tables turned!!! 

one of the most gross things arrow has done is the relationship between sara and laurel and the way they were pitted against each other - with oliver at the center. and im not saying that’s how i think of it - i like to think their issues went deeper and had fuckall to do with oliver’s dick, but that’s how the show framed it]. 

like, if there were scales, laurel would always be put on the lower one - you could tell they didnt respect her character much, because they always sacrificed it to make someone else look better. using laurel as the ‘bad guy’ to buy empathy/sympathy for some other character?) 

so, what went wrong? 

im fucked if i know. 

maybe nothing. plenty of people love laurel the way she is. including me: beautifully fucked up and flawed and, this is my idea, angry as fuck but still good. or trying to be. or maybe this is my version of laurel. as i have a version of all the characters i love - essentially everyone on the show, with the notable  exception of merlyn. 

maybe s2 was meant to be laurel’s ‘island’ - because according to arrow thats the only way to birth heroes. 

fake, that sounds. but okay. 

or maybe they thought nobody liked laurel and she wouldn’t work as the black canary anyway. so her replacement was premeditate, her journey, as some say, only a fulfillment of contractual obligations towards katie. 

or maybe the s2 journey/breakdown had been planned from the beginning?  

i don’t know. 

whatever the answer is, the result is still ??? and fucking stupid.

because the mantel was passed on from sara to laurel. sara gave laurel the proverbial jacket and went on her own way, without harm. having made up with her family, having gained her freedom (and then compromised it), having made up with her sister, redeemed herself in her own eyes and in the eyes of those she loved and who loved her. having started to see herself as a hero, and believe , finally , that she was one. or could be. 

regardless of the reason for sara’s existence, sara was and IS beautiful and so is her journey, because to me, hers is a journey of homecoming and hope.  

BUT - in s3 they killed sara regardless ??? 

even though the ‘hero mantel’ had been already passed…. and here is where i get utterly lost because, why? i dont know. i honest to god dont know.  these people put two canaries on our screen but couldn’t keep them there? neither one can live while the other one survives, apparently? there was absolutely no need for sara to die - and the shameful way she did die - NOW THAT’S WHERE I START GAINING INSIGHT - because it exposes the true nature of the writer’s hypocrisy and reasons: a woman who said the iconic line ‘no woman should suffer at the hands of men’ was murdered by a girl being controlled by a man to get TO another man, while sara was shoved into a trashcan and then a literal fridge.

this ^ is where it starts to get transparent.

like, maybe they didn’t try so hard with laurel because, they don’t try that hard with women in the arrowverse in general. 

maybe, they didn’t really know how to write laurel like a person, out of the archetype she was built to be. a woman written by and FOR the kind of people that think its important to give her stuffed bras to puff up her breasts does not bode well for her future.

i would however like to take a moment to point out the fucking hypocrisy of them reinforcing, in dinah, this whole ‘defender of women’ thing that they had going with sara AFTER WHAT THEY DID TO SARA ^^^ !!! they are trying so fucking hard to copy paste the traits of the ‘successful canary’ (whom they still killed) onto dinah, (perhaps even as a way to distance her from the ‘unsuccessful canary’) – but every time dinah says something like that, i cant help but be reminded of sara and what these same writers did to her AND HOW HYPOCRITICAL THAT MAKES HER LINES SOUND, KNOWING WHERE THEY COME FROM. like, generally the reaction i have is  -

WITH YOUR FUCKING VILLAIN MUSTACHE! 

I SEE YOU!

ps: i do not like the trend i notice that heroines are more easily accepted as heroines in arrow, when they mirror Oliver’s journey to heroism.  sara did; then her latest reincarnation - dinah - mirrored sara’s. (they tried to do it with Laurel, Felicity. in a kind of way even with diggle - though that might be a stretch)  it’s one of the reasons, i think, that sara and dinah are more successful with the fandom? they fit the mold more easily. easier to box in, pin down. their reasons, internal pushes, are easier to grasp - because they mirror the hero’s. and the hero gets plenty of exposition, and we are also basically programmed to empathize with him.

while its seems harder for people to accept that other kinds of journeys for women - not because it is harder, but because then they’d have to figure out the internal workings of these women who are DIFFERENT from the hero. people would have to really THINK about it, and generally, i find that’s not a natural inclination , when it comes to the internal worlds of people who are not the white male (presented as straight despite various queer!baiting flags) hero. 

There are other forms of journeys, motives - that would be just as brilliant as Oliver’s - or generally the ‘tragedy-born’ hero’s. And that would fit the personality of the characters better, individualize them more, make them stand out on their own. Like Laurel’s need to do good, her disappointment with the system and want to fix it, keeping a different moral code from the others. Felicity’s plain need to make an impact, do something with her life, just because. No need for ‘dark arcs’ cause that’s just how she was born as. 

But that’s a journey that would require energy to absorb, something one would have to figure out for themselves, whole watching, oftentimes even making it up, imagining it. and yeah, most ppl just dont bother.