Board Thread:Arrow discussions/@comment-807326-20170202010018/@comment-29493700-20170212015321

Kir the Wizard wrote:

JQuake101 wrote:

Who brought men into this? Ya know what, now that you did, let's discuss this. Imagine if instead of the Black Canary, we had Batman on this show. Imagine them cycling through four or five different people calling themselves Batman and more than half of those people conviently having the first name 'Bruce'. Imagine the outrage from hoards of fanboys that their white male iconic hero was being butchered, disrespected, and side lined the way Dinah Laurel Lance was through her entire time on Arrow and even in death. The Black Canary is not a legacy, it's an exclusive daughter-mother mantel. But as is evident (and has always been), Arrow has zero respect for comic canon, and is misogynistic. Again: Laurel Lance was not even the original Canary on Arrow. Her sister was. Who's got shafted because the producers wanted to try something new with Laurel.

Arrow is, most of all, an adaptation of the comics, and often does not follow the intricacies of comic canon, as adaptations often do. Tim Burton had Batman with no problems about killing. Christopher Nolan turned Joker into something very different. Zack Snyder had killed Jimmy Olsen immediately after introducing him. Meanwhile, Arrowverse shows had no problems changing the characters' looks (Olsen), names (Sara, Curtis, Harrison Wells), origins (Vertigos, Oliver himself, Hawks). And in Arrowverse, the Canary is a legacy title, started by Sara Lance. Sara was succeeded by Laurel, who directly wanted to continue the legacy of her sister, despite Sara's death. Their mother was never the Canary, boo hoo. How does that somehow translate into misogyny boggles my mind.

And if you care about adapting comic canon so much (I do, for example), then why are you making a fuss over Laurel, when Sara, despite having a different name, resembled the Canaries from the comics in both looks and personality from the time she was introduced as a vigilante in Season 2? Why is there no demand to have Sara back in the role she fit on all fronts (except for not being a metahuman)? Because she didn't have "Dinah" as a middle name, like Laurel had?

And why did you even bring the non-existent Batman example, when the show already has men with legacy titles, like Vertigo, Wells, Arrow and Flash? Though, to answer your question: guess what, Bruce Wayne had been killed/crippled and succeeded in main comics. He was also brought back to act in a slightly different role. You know, like what Arrowverse did with Sara, Eobard, Hunter Zolomon, Malcolm Merlyn... Killing and replacing a major character is a common ploy to shake the status quo (after all, it's sci-fi, so you can just bring the character back if it comes to fan demand). Sara was killed so that Laurel could succeed her as the Black Canary, for example.

The question comes down to: is the change done in a quality way? And I do understand blaming Arrow for giving Laurel a weak finale in her role. Heck, from the very start I suspected that her condition wouldn't be permanent (and certain comments from the showrunners imply that so did they, with Flashpoint or something), but something didn't add up in the end, possibly with having Katie Cassidy in the main cast for another season, forcing a change in plans. But calling out Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Miracle, of all people, on misogyny, for making errors in production, or free run on adaptation, is ridiculous. Ridiculous? I can list all the ways the show's writing has been misogynistic.

- Laurel/Katie Cassidy was denied the Black Canary mantel for nearly three seasons, with most of her character traits being given to Sara as The Canary.

- Yeah, Sara was meant to be an extension of Laurel's orgin story as the Black Canary, but in order for it to happen, Sara was fridged.

-  When Laurel finally gets to take on the Black Canary mantel, she is disrespected, belittled, and dismissed by every single character.

- Laurel's death was not even the result of her own actions, but the actions of men (her father, Oliver). That is misogynistic and bad.

- Felicity Smoak as a character is misogynistic and bad. Season 2, for example. When Sara showed up, they had Felicity acting insecure and territorial about her place on the team. Diggle and Oliver were never threatened by/insecure over each other. Roy wasn’t insecure/threatened by anyone when he joined the team later, however the very second that the team introduced a second woman, the writers decided to have Felicity express openly that maybe the team wouldnt need her anymore. The writers literally waited until they had another girl on the team and then made Felicity’s plot about pitting them against each other, despite the fact that Felicity and Sara had entirely different skill sets and contributed different things to the team. She is even written to act threatened by every woman in Oliver's life, going as far as to throw shade at his baby mother when her child was missing. Even in last week's episode, Felicity made a crack about Oliver taking Dinah somewhere to have sex with her, because the two were alone for a period of time.

- The state of Arrow's female count. Artemis is a traitor, Susan is a traitor, Thea was randomly gone for three weeks, Laurel's dead, and Earth-2 Laurel is locked up after trying to kill everyone, despite the fact that the writer's could have given her a redemption storyline and had her take the role of the Black Canary. - Dinah Drake is introduced, but as an attempt to course correct the massive misogynistic mistakes made with Dinah Laurel Lance.