Katsullivan

If he doesn't destroy Wakanda first, by sacrificing Wakanda resources and Wakanda lives to protect the whole world. If I were Wakandan, I'dbe feeling mighty pissed off at King T'Challa right about now.

Or to ask it more meta-lly, can a female character ever merit hard masculine power? You literally put forward an argument that Stannis's blind faith in Melisandre that he was the Prince That Was Promised to destroy the White Walkers - a blind faith that led directly to him burning his daughter alive - made Stannis morally superior to Dany. The inversion of your statement is closer to the truth - the only way to attack/condemn Dany is by taking her actions out of context and proscribing some pseudo-ideology based on 21st century comic book philosophy on her that are neither realistic to this story or even real life. I mean, take the EXTRA GOOD™ Standard, for example. We've had characters on the show who've all been shining beacons of EXTRA GOOD™. Ned Stark - our hero, the moral standard upon which all other moral standards are measured. Warned his enemy of his plans to expose her. Gave her the chance to get herself and her children to safety. What did all that EXTRA GOOD™ get him? A head on the block. His children scattered. His daughter married to a man she loathed. Another turned fugitive. His son leading a war, and then dying for it. Talking about said son - that's another example of EXTRA GOOD™ at work. Robb Stark, who rather than keep Theon Greyjoy hostage to the Iron Islands's loyalty, decided to send his good friend to bring back an army. He rewarded for that bit of EXTRA GOOD™ by his home being raided, destroyed and his brothers (to the best of his knowledge) brutally murdered. He killed an ally, Lord Karstark because Justice, Morality and all those pesky EXTRA GOOD™ stuff. He lost half his army and gained an enemy. Despite all advice to discard a woman he slept with for comfort (book) or to keep her as a mistress (show), EXTRA GOOD™ demanded that Robb give up a strategic alliance to do the honorable thing. What did all that EXTRA GOOD™ get him? A literal wolf's head on his neck and his mother's throat slit. The North was lost because of the EXTRA GOOD™ of Ned and Robb Stark. So you want to condemn judge Dany? You want to condemn her for not being EXTRA GOOD™? Then do it in in the fair context of the characters and the world and the story. Otherwise, it's just as relevant that the only way you can attack her is by holding her to an impossible standard that has been proven impractical.

He he. Malicious Compliance. :)

Yes, I literally just said now: I mean, you just proved my point.

Dammit, Killmonger. I really hope that it's revealed that the herb can be regrown because this would be really horrible. (Not the Challenge bit, but just the extinction of the Herb).

We have no way of knowing that really. For one thing, she gave the Iron Islands their Independence. For another... Every other character does this. Why is Dany singled out? I mean, you might as well argue that Sansa would have still invaded Winterfell with the Vale Army regardless of who was Warden of the North. She certainly didn't do it with the support of the North. The wildlings and the Vale fought against Northern houses in the Battle of the Bastards. She didn't do it to save Rickon, her brother. She had already written him off as good as dead. Jon himself did not want to fight Ramsay. He wanted to travel East, and escape the chaos of Westeros but Sansa dug her heels in. I'm giving Sansa as an example because she's just another character on the show playing the "game of thrones" - claiming a right to rulership, land and titles simply because they were born into a certain House or bloodline and demanding that men fight and die to re-establish their inheritance. Like I said every other character does this. It's taken as a matter of course that Sansa will fight for Winterfell, that Stannis will fight for the Iron Throne, and Cersei will defend her ill-gotten Crown. And yet when it's Dany, the same logic somewhat doesn't apply - and I really wonder why this is. I see the same kind of ... should I say... dislike leveled against Arya and it makes me think that it might have to do with what kind of power these characters have. Unlike Cersei and Sansa, Dany and Arya fight with their own power, which is usually coded as masculine. Cersei and Sansa command by proxy and a more traditionally feminine manner. I mean it's significant that when Arya threatens Sansa, Sansa's reply is "a 100 men have sworn loyalty to me"... while when threatened by the Dothraki, Dany's answer was to burn them alive herself? Jon and Stannis lead men because they themselves are great warriors and fighters. Dany leads an Army of Dothraki because she defeated all the Khals. Like Arya, Dany has a very masculine kind of power, and I think that's why so much of what is taken for granted, or otherwise accepted in other characters - sometimes even the same identical scenarios - is condemned or criticized when it applies to Dany and Arya to a lesser extent. (From a meta perspective, I wonder if there's a significance/symbolism in Sansa's direwolf dying early in the story while Arya's is still alive to this day.)

Stannis marched to the Wall to fight wildlings- the only "King" who answered the Lord Commander's call for aid. And if he had done it expecting nothing in return then that would have been noble, but not compared to him marching to the Wall to fight zombies. Yet he didn't expect nothing in return. He tried to recruit the wildlings to join his army to fight Lannisters, and he tried to win the North by offering Jon legitimacy and heir-ship to Winterfell. And generally, I won't call Stannis following Melisandre's advice to murder his nephew, and burn men for witch-craft as "coming off better than Dany". Also I don't understand how Dany is reprehensible for executing 2 resolved traitors by dragon-fire but Stannis burning his daughter alive because he believed so strongly that he was the Chosen One ---- as Stannis coming off better than anyone.

Oh I definitely agree that this decision was not unanimous and that's why Westallen succeeded in weathering the storm for as long as it did. But would it never, ever have happened (if AJK stayed on)? I dunno. I'd like to think not. But I've also learnt from a looooot of shows, not to underestimate that racism can be: petty, insidious*, blatant and brutally effective. Just think about all the shows that started out strongly that ended up prematurely cancelling or bleeding ratings because the show-runners basically decided that they'd rather the show fail with white leads than succeed with poc-leads. *Sidelining Iris would have eventually led to her being written out. If AJK kept writing her poorly/ giving people reasons to ignore and/or dislike her ... the narrative won't have been that "the writers aren't doing Iris justice", it would have been "there's a problem with Iris's Character". "They've tried Everything with the Character and the Character is not working". "They can't think of Anything more to do with the Character except to Let Her Go, which would Open A New Chapter in The Flash, an Opportunity to Tell New Stories". Isn't that what was said about

Are you asking why should his initial request have not been honored? Yes, it's not his fault that he didn't grow up in Wakanda... but the people of Wakanda shouldn't have to pay for it. He might be a royal prince, but to all intents and purposes, he's a stranger and a foreigner. What if it was no one in Wakanda's fault that Killmonger had grown up in the US? What if the CIA or the KGB or some other foreign government had kidnapped Prince N'jobu's son and raised him as a pawn to use against Wakanda?

He's de-powered before the Challenge. Unless you mean, that now T'Challa refused a Challenge because there's no threat that someone else can be sneaked a herb and become a rival? I think the Council were scared of Killmonger --- but he was also saying things that some of them agreed with / got convinced by and that's why World War III happened. Dictatorships are more complicated than that. They foster well in corrupt countries because the "Rule of the Bully" exists in every niche of government. If anything, you can argue how Wakanda is a good example of how a "Righteous" country can easily fall prey to a Mad man because people are too busy trying to do the Right thing than the Smart thing. Think Okoye vs Nakia's argument about serving vs saving Wakanda. Killmonger showed up and he got the Challenge by right even though smart thinking would have told anyone that a man with an obvious chip on his solider who had never lived a day in his life in Wakanda should never be allowed anywhere near rulership. Okoye and the rest of the Dora Milage stayed loyal to him because he was King, even though the smart thing was to have opposed him. However, I seriously doubt if the Council had been unanimously against Invasion that Killmonger could have done it. The very existence of the Jobari, living apart from Wakanda - it's telling that they call their leader King, not Chief or Leader or something more humble - and yet still being a part of Wakanda - is an indication that the King only has power because he's been given power by the Tribes.

Yikes! Thanks for correcting that. That is an excellent point. But technically, Wakanda has a pseudo-democracy - the King can always be ousted via the Challenge. Killmonger apparently had a right to arbituarily challenge T'Challa without ceremony simply for being royal blood and it's possible the same right extends to the other Tribe. The Challenge will need to be vetted via the Tribe's leadership because it seems the Leader is the one who actually declares the Challenge on behalf of the contender... But is that much different from party elections and primaries and state primaries in a country like the US? So if anyone isn't happy with T'Challa's decisions then they can change the King without changing the system of government. Plus I'm not sure Wakanda is an absolute monarchy. Killmonger seemed to need the buy-in of the Council before declaring World War III. (In fact you can argue that if T'Challa wasn't such a stickler for rules, the second Challenge would never have held because the Council were not unanimously for it. So how absolute the monarchy seems to rely on how absolutely he is supported by the Council.)

Stannis committed to fighting wildlings. Well if Dany is petty for not believing in fairy-tale zombies then Sansa and the rest of the Northern Lords - the people who literally live next door to the threat and who crowned a maybe-zombie their King, yet still disbelieve - are petty fools.

Are we allowed to draw comparisons to other relationships, and keep significant plot details in Spoiler tabs? Well if you're using source material, then TVD is an example of Which is significant to The Flash because it shows that Iris being Barry's OTL in the comics doesn't guarantee an endgame on the show. And when you compare this to the parent show, it definitely seems that AJK was banking on this. The bottom line is that there's no real "Point of No Return" for writers to stop an OTP from reaching Endgame Status. And the fact that this switch was designed from the beginning is exactly the point that I make when I say that the showrunners (or at least the AJK portion of the showrunners) intended for Westallen to run its course, and Barry have an endgame with Snowbarry. To be honest, I don't believe right now that the Flash will drop Westallen anymore but that's not because of how long WA has been official but because AJK has left, and I'm already seeing the dismantling of some of his handiwork happening real-time. If AJK had remained as showrunner... I don't think it would have mattered if WA was official for 2 seasons or 5.

And almost every Iris hater I have interacted with will swear up and down that there are many, many, many, many reasons to dislike Iris that have nothing to do with her being black. Don't remind me. That made the haters even madder. This. I don't have a problem with Barry and Iris growing up together, and Barry having a crush on her and being unable to tell her for that reason. The Toy Ship/ Childhood Romance / Patient Childhood Friend etc are tropes for a reason. FRINGE even basically retcons the show's OTP first meeting as adults to them meeting as kids but suppressing that memory --- just to capitalize on this Childhood Romance. The problem was the way the writers/showrunners underlined that set-up. They emphasized all the wrong things and made important things ambiguous. Barry was never adopted - but it's hard to know for certain when the show has Joe calling him his son, and giving him his father's watch (poor Iris. Poor Wally). Barry and Iris had a relationship before he came to live with the Wests, but for a long time, the show acted like if they met for the first time when Joe "adopted" him. I remember that after "Cause and Effect" there were a good number of people who crossed from neutral/skeptical to huge Westallen fans because of the way the episode showcased their relationship. And what did Cause and Effect do that was so unique to that episode? It highlighted Barry and Iris's child-hood friendship. It had them reminiscing about high-school, the first time they met, and it had Iris recollecting the night that Barry came to live with her. It really emphasized their relationship as something separate from Joe, and even the fact that they lived together. And the show had many opportunities to do this in season 1 that it squandered. In the Pilot, the original Barry & Iris child actors had a scene where Barry comes to live with the Wests (temporarily it seemed) and Iris welcomed him, and took his hand and that scene was cut off. For goodness's sake why? It was an important scene to their relationship and it was erased. Then there's the fact that Barry never acts like Iris is his best friend. I even remember a scene where he talks about how thanks to his speed he now has friends in Cisco & Caitlin. Apparently, Iris was just chopped liver before! He says that keeping secrets from her is hard and is hurting him, but he acts unaffected by his actions. You never get the impression that he's tortured by lying and hiding from her, or that he's committing this huge betrayal. He recruits Eddie, Iris's own boyfriend, to keep the secret from Iris at which point it starts getting ridiculous. And most importantly, not one person in Barry's circle of secret-keepers - not even Iris's "bestie" Felicity - points out to Barry that his being cruel to her. The fallout of it is that when Iris finds out Barry is The Flash and is furious at him and Joe, the audience feels alienated from her anger. The show's never acted like Barry and Joe are committing this huge betrayal by lying to her because it didn't establish a relationship where truth is expected --- so Iris just comes across as entitled and unreasonable. Why the heck is her business that Barry is the Flash? Who the heck is she anyway? The fact that the showrunners knew what odds Candice/Iris/Westallen were playing against and still stacked the dice against her/WA was deliberately malicious, and not just tone-deafness or "color-blindness".

The part that confuses me is why W'kabi had that seat in the first place. On Challenge Day you can see that each tribe was represented by two people - an elderly Chief/Leader and a young champion. e.g. for the Water Tribe, Nakia was the Champion and the Elder with the lip-disc was the Tribe Leader. W'kabi was the Challenger for the Border Tribe but there was also an elderly Chief beside him. He seats on the King's Council and that's the same for every other Tribe except the Border Tribe. I head-wanked that W'kabi was not the actual Border leader but he's clearly the leader's proxy and almost certainly the heir to the Tribe, and he has enough authority to speak on behalf of the Chief (or so much influence that it comes down to the same thing). Of course, it's possible that each Tribe have unique leadership styles and whoever represents the Border Tribe on the King's Council doesn't necessarily have to be the Border Tribe Leader.

Well not really. I mean, Lana is still Clark's Once and Michael is Jane's One. There were instances on both shows where Clark and Jane respectively had choices and repeatedly chose to be with Lana, Michael respectively until that choice was completely taken from them. Either way, these are clear examples of "building up an OTP and dropping it halfway through the story" being part of the show's DNA.

I just realized I'm mixing up discussions between here and Lightning Rod but I guess we're all having the same discussions. LOL. Michael was set up as Jane's One True Love, the one she chose over Rafael, the one she would have had a happy ever after with no regrets if he hadn't died. Much like Lana and Clark in Smallville. And at the same time, another ship was always meant to be Endgame - JanexRafael and ClarkxLois and this was built into the DNA of the show. Just because the show always meant to circle back to JanexRafael and ClarkxLois doesn't make JanexMichael or ClarkxLana less OTP. Rafael fans and Lois fans may always have to live with the reality that their ship won by default but to all intents and purposes, their ships won.

That's exactly the point.

AJK and the other showrunners told Candice to stay off social media after she was cast because of the backlash they anticipated. The "color blind/ just being CW and promoting ship wars" excuse doesn't fly here. He knew exactly what he was doing by propping a White woman as the alternative love interest before an episode of the show had already aired. This basically. And this. Essentially, they are counting on Whiteness winning. If you ever wondered why Lana Lang was such a loathed character in Smallville, it's because the show committed the taboo of not just making her half of the show's OTP, but using White women to constantly prop her. The fact that the show ended without Lana being demeaned to elevate Chloe is something that a particular group of fans still feel bitter to this very day.

Vampire Diaries - Jane The Virgin - Also if they kill Iris, they won't technically be dropping their OTP but to all intents and purposes, it will have the same effect. At this point, theonly way they can end Westallen is to kill her. I'd even argue that Smallville didn't end Clana. They made it so that Clark was settling for Lois because he couldn't have the woman he truly wanted. So it was Pyrrhic victory for Clois fans.

I thought your point was that there's no credence to the concept that the North were loyal to the Targaryens because historically, the North had always sought their independence, resented Targaryen rule and had isolated themselves as far apart from the Targaryens as they were allowed to? Because my counter was to show that there's a history of the North being allies to the Targaryens, not just subjects, and there were many opportunities where the North rather than break away from the Kingdom, actually endorsed and fought for Targaryen rule. If your take from Great Jon's "it was the dragons we married but now the dragons are dead" is that it was rejection of Targaryen rule, then that's your opinion but it's not really backed up by much.

Cregan Stark raised his banners for Queen Rhaeynra, and sent down men South for her war, and was instrumental in re-establishing order after the chaos of the Dance of the Dragons and securing the throne for Aegon III. His heir rode and died alongside Daeron I when he conquered Dorne. The North also fought for the Targaryens during the Blackfyre rebellion. The "North don't like Targaryens" is a show thing- and even the show had Ned Stark legitimizing Robert's claim to the Throne through his Targaryen mother. The North didn't secede because of the Targaryens .... they seceded because of the Lannisters.

It is a retcon. This is the conversation between Barry and Future Barry in 3x19, "Once and Future Flash" - 2:30 "... you want answers, Barry? How about this: you'll go back. You'll do everything you can think of to save her. You're even going to create time remnants of yourself but he's just going to kill them all mostly and then on the night of May 23rd iris West will die in your arms. [...] and it will break you [...] There'll be nothing left but stopping Savitar. [....] You won't be there for Joe... for any of them [...] then one day you'll stop him, lock him up in the Speedforce [...] but at that point he'd already won." The sequence of events is clear: Create time remnants -> All but one are killed -> Iris dies -> Barry abandons Team Flash -> Barry finally defeats Savitar. The writers retconned it, so that it would make sense that Barry's discovery of Savitar's true identity didn't just have him go: "whelp, I'm not gonna make time remnants then, that'll do it."

On this topic, someone on tumblr just posted this gif and it reminded me that there was a situation where Barry, Iris and Patty were all interacting in one scene and the show could easily have framed it into Patty being jealous or at least intimidated by Iris. And it's telling that again, Linda Park as played by a WOC is the character "allowed" to prop up Iris in that scene, not white Patty Spivot stays unimpressed. Well the other variables don't "cancel" out racism. They can co-exist. Most people seem to believe that it's not racism unless it's only racism. e.g. it's not possible that AJK is playing favorites with his actors... and is racist at the same time. Indeed, I usually find that's the opposite i.e. things in a vacuum don't look racist until context is added. AJK's actions don't look racist, just offensive and unprofessional --- until you realize that the actors who are always on his un-favorite lists who are shit over for his white favorites are the black actors in the cast. Storywise, Barry being Joe's favorite kid, being prioritized over his biological kids doesn't appear racist. In fact it seems rather noble and open-minded of Joe. When you now add white Barry being black Joe's favorite kid, being prioritized over his black biological kids...

I feel that the show deliberately retconned that relationship to make Westallen more incesty. If we're taking the Pilot as a benchmark, it's clear that Barry/Joe don't have a father/son relationship. You can see in that clip that there's resentment there that cuts both ways. Barry didn't see Joe as his father. He came to appreciate Joe had been a father to him after Henry's imprisonment without Barry realizing this. But there's a difference between that mindset of gratitude and a mindset where Barry is literally calling Joe "Dad". The latter was not part of their dynamic, and was just put there to muddy waters. If anything the obfuscation of the Joe/Barry relationship deprived us of a scene after the Wedding where Barry could have then said, "I can call you Dad now." and Joe replied "You've always been a son to me, Barry." or something. They had Joe call Barry his son in 1x22 when it flashed back to the 9months coma: Barry was coding and Joe went for help. I won't call Joe/Barry a father-son dynamic. I think after season 1, it started veering dangerously into Mammy/White Ward territory. The show having Joe ignore and de-prioritize his Black children to prop Barry was offensive. The sad truth is that whenever you see a large white audience happy with a Black person/White person dynamic, when closer examined, you'll find out it's a dynamic that essentially debases the black person for the sake of the white one. Eddie didn't know Barry was the Streak so from his perspective, Barry wasn't literally interfering with Westallen for Eddie to be intimidated. There were ways to have written that without making Iris as a jealous shrew and even depicting Patty as the clinging, irrational "other woman". Even the Iris/Barry/Linda dynamic could have been written in a manner that was far more flattering to Iris that it ended up being. Microaggressions. I'm quite certain that the goal of 2A was to push Iris off the show.