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So, demisexual Laurel Lance thoughts:
Demisexual!Laurel Lance is an important headcanon for me, because I first ran into the idea at arrowmeta tumblr during mid-S2(1) when I had started to consider whether I might be an the ace-spectrum. I eventually started identifying as demisexual, which is why I look for demi readings of my faves lol. Anyway, the fact is, Laurel ended up only having 2 proper relationships, both of which were with people she had known ‘forever’, Oliver and Tommy. They never gave them a complete timeline, but it can be assumed that Oliver and Laurel were together from high school and through Laurel’s undergrad years, although it was not necessarily a stable relationship, because young!Oliver was an immature asshole cheater. But they loved each other and Laurel considered Oliver to be the love of her life. She thought so even when Tommy was still alive (jsyk).
The only other person we know for sure Laurel had romantic/sexual feelings for was Tommy. They started out of mutual grief and developed into something proper once Oliver came back and everybody got to deal with some grief and other feelings. But they weren’t very stable because Tommy didn’t trust Laurel, so. This isn’t meant to rank her relationship btw, but I am still Lauriver trash against my better judgment.
So, relationships between people who were first friends is basically the defining aspects of demisexuality (granted, it requires an emotional bond that is not necessarily friendship, and it seems that there is a specific term amicus/amicasexual/-romantic for requiring friendship to develop romantic feelings but I’m going with demisexual here anyway). The fact that the writers sidelined her so much after S1, including rejecting her as love interest to Oliver or giving her a proper one of her own* after S1, makes it somewhat difficult to fully know how she experiences attraction, but the fact that her (lack of) love life never seemed to affect her plays into the idea that she does not necessarily put much thought into it or require romantic love to be happy (well, as happy as she could be with her life and the writers hating her). I don’t think she really pined for Oliver during S2-4x18 but I do think there were some leftover feelings that waned and strengthened with Oliver’s behavior. IDK, there was often an undercurrent (which I’ll make a photoset at some point) but they are friends first and foremost and their relationship was important for both of them. IDK what this has to do with the actual post but sometimes I get Lauriver feels. I always have Laurel feels.
*So, the kinda love interests, let’s talk about them. I guess a lot of these had to do with actor availability, I know it was the case with Ted Grant and possibly Adam Donner, but lack of proper love interests for Laurel is a fascinating issue. On the one hand, you can better headcanon her as ace spec; female characters who are not defined by their (lack of) love lives are very rare, she had lots of other issues and relationships which I am grateful for; but on a genre and network as obsessed with romance as superhero shows on the CW, not giving her a love interest is part of her sidelining. It seemed that they might develop something between her and her boss Adam Donner, but then he betrayed her and was gone. I was worried they would have something develop between her and Sebastian Blood, having her date a villain without her knowledge (which is gross!) but then they had her be the only one to figure out Sebastian was a villain but then they used that to shit on her because no one believed her (which is differently gross! ableisticly gross). The de-aged Ted Grant might have been good for Laurel, but the actor got a better job and we still don’t know for sure whether he died or not during the fight against Brick (I’m pretty sure were supposed to assume he lived but was that ever clarified?). Apparently they thought about maybe developing Laurel/Nyssa romantically but decided against it because too much significant other switching between the Lance sisters *sigh*. That could have been an interesting relationship. Laurel deserves all the love. Which is why I have decided to ship Laurel/Mari aka Black Vixen.
What I most like about this headcanon that although Laurel suffered from depression and addiction, she is a normal person and doesn’t have social interaction issues that I admittedly often use as if not basis then to strengthen my ace spectrum headcanons. She is a normal person who just does not worry about her love life and that is rather refreshing. But I also would have loved if there had been more people who loved her like she deserved. That list basically starts and ends with Thea Queen.
Anyway, demisexual!Laurel Lance is important to me, I’ll fight you over it.
(1) http://nocticola.tumblr.com/post/93984880516/laurel-as-demisexual
This tag doesn’t have much but still: http://nocticola.tumblr.com/tagged/demisexual-laurel+lance