there’s a difference between a passing of a torch (or taking up a mantle — depending on how you view sara’s s2 parting gift) to have laurel shakily but steadily fill the canary’s combat boots, a frequent occurrence in long-running superhero comics when things get stale and fresh characters are introduced, and to have laurel pose specifically as not only the canary, but as sara lance as the canary.
I understand the writers have it set in their minds that the only catalyst for laurel taking up the mask was to have her sister die, bc apparently death is the only motivator to these sad men, but I also understand that they’re also mildly obsessed (vocally so) with watching laurel fucking fail at it, repeatedly, graphically, in ways the rest of team arrow never did.
I also understand that assuming the personal identity of sara (SARA, sara lance, daughter of quentin and dinah lance, sister of laurel, dreamed of becoming a doctor and ended up an assassin, sara, full stop), of the person behind the mask, under the textually and metatextually justified excuse/reason of keeping another person safe/in the dark for the greater good on this season of All My Arrows, cw’s newest soap!, is dismissive and disrespectful.
sara was the arrow/flash universe’s first queer character, first queer woman, and they killed her. she was also a central player in s2 and continues, posthumously, to be so in s3. she had a life and she had a legacy, and it was really, really complicated, and really, really messy, but it was hers. she had a voice, w the pipes and somehow soothing inflections (when she relaxed) of a valley girl. she called the toilet “the little blonde’s room”. she was 26 years old, trained by a league of killers, and still called her father “daddy”.
by using her literal voice, or a rendering of it, to speak through, to adopt her mannerisms, her rhetoric — things tied so closely to who she was, to her identity, because what we say and how we say it determines so much about us — just to fool her father into believing she’s still breathing is not only a massive violation of her privacy and right to rest, but a theft of her character. another something stolen, another part of sara lance adopted by someone else, without her consent, used in ways she never had the chance to disapprove of.
sara lance was not reusable, she was not recyclable, she was not supposed to be disposable. if the show keeps hacking away at what’s left of her to further the pathetic plotline they’re written for themselves, fine. but don’t ask me to approve of it under the broad banner of laurel’s newfound, “worthy” (to the writers + to a large extent the fans) screentime, a banner sara died for. don’t ask me to be happy about a character’s elevation when they’re standing on the bones of another woman.
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
gummygunk
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romaincrisis
