#i just feel like his effort and kindness shouldn't go unacknowledged

[tardis--dreams]

On a scale from 1 to 10 how weird would it be to write a little thank you/goodbye card to a colleague you really like where you'd tell him you learned a lot from him and appreciate his support and had fun working with him? It's a 10, isn't it.

[ufonaut]

Complain about fandom portrayal of Connor hawke and Ollie

YES BABEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EXCUSE THE INCOMING ESSAY

there's nothing more profoundly baffling to me than the general fandom's refusal to understand that oliver queen/green arrow is a household name on par with the justice league trinity (no claims of obscurity here, please) and that he's textually canonically explicitly -- whatever you wanna call it -- a complete and utter asshole for the vast majority of his existence between 1960 and 1995. neither of those are things that stop him from being an unimaginably compelling character (because what is there to explore with a version as sanitized as the fandom would like him to be?) or a hero as niceness is a prerequisite for neither

oliver is an alcoholic, has cheated on his longtime girlfriend multiple times, has a concerning predilection for younger women to the point that his best friend goes "you have food in your fridge older than her, hal. who are you, ollie?" at himself upon finding a seventeen year old attractive (brave & the bold 2007 #2), abandoned his ward, paid a woman he got pregnant to get an abortion and abandoned his son over and over again (by dragon's blood connor is very much hoping to get an audience with ollie via joining an archery competition because there's no other way to get in touch). these are facts! not opinions or headcanons or anything other than facts! my one & only desire is for these things to be acknowledged by the fandom and reconciled with ollie's heroism because nowhere else have i seen such blatant denial of the text beyond the worst of the batfam stans. believe it or not, it's very much possible to be a good character and not that great of a person

as for connor, i think the fandom's greatest crime is its insistence on connor's inclusion in the """"arrowfam"""""" when his tenure in green arrow 1988, connor hawke: dragon's blood 2007 and even the likes of convergence: green arrow #1-2 (which is not canon but firmly based on it and thus reaches obvious conclusions) make for a very good case study of precisely why he'd feel excluded from ollie's so-called found family after he's been repeatedly abandoned by him. in fact, and this is another thing that goes unspoken in fandom circles, i still can't believe there's no love for connor's actual found family (master jansen & eddie fyers) in a place so rife with love for that particular trope. the immensity of connor, who's grown up in an ashram and thinks himself out of step with the world, finding a safe space with these men he's come to see as father figures shouldn't go unacknowledged!

beyond that, i think connor's just as often portrayed by the fandom as naturally very kind, loving, calm & collected. he is all of those things, of course, but it's an active choice and effort on the part of a very angry young man who could just as well lash out at the world and be completely in the right for it. the choice of it is exactly what makes connor such an absolute delight to read