She is not part of the tournament but can I talk about Laurel Lance from Arrow for a minute? She is the reason I keep voting for Iris West in solidarity, even though I have only seen a season of The Flash and never really engaged with that fandom.
Fandom misogyny literally got Laurel killed, and huge parts of the fandom celebrated it, from people who thought she was annoying either because she supposedly dragged the show (for having mental health issues!) (also: notice how when people dislike the writing it is very often the female character who gets blamed instead of the people who write the show) [<- action bros], to those who thought she was “in the way” of the fan favourite ship [<- Olicity stans], or simply because she disagrees with the male protagonist. Seeing people be gleeful over the way a female character is killed off, graphically might I add, is THE vilest and most visceral fandom experience I have ever had, except this wasn’t even the worst part because it was fandom misogyny on so many levels. It was the fandom towards the character, yes, but also the fandom towards the fandom, AND the showrunner towards the fandom.
Her character motif is a bird and Olicity stans would literally spam pictures of dead birds to both her fans and to the actress who played Laurel herself. These fans targeted and harassed people for simply liking a female character. On top of that, the showrunner Marc Guggenheim and other Arrow writers would get into public twitter fights with Laurel fans. It was open hostility from all sides of the fandom space. And of course all of that culminating in the killing off of her character. And, somehow, all of this is only the tip of the iceberg of all the atrocities that happened during those years.
I think a lot of things contributed to this. Being a CW show. Being targeted towards teens. Being a comics adaptation. So anyway, Arrowverse solidarity.
laurel lance propaganda! also sort of iris west propaganda!
