Katsullivan

Whelp. @Trini Thanks for posting the highlights of the interview. Candice always sounds so poised and intelligent. I didn't know she was in Heroes!

The Flashpoint ship has sailed. Is DeVoe trying to make Barry's life hell/destroy the city or does he just have some highly intellectual endgame and Barry is in his way? Because (for once!) I don't get the impression that the villain is Obssessed-With-Barry, just that Barry is an obstacle in his way. Which I thought was a refreshing change.

Cool theory but it would have been even more kick-ass if Sara Diggle had been Savitar in season 3. At this point, the "Barry screwed with the timeline and must pay!!!!" ship has sailed. *knock-on-wood*

Well, why am I not surprised? Given a choice between: an honest discussion about race or throwing up red herrings... Iris being the lone black female LI means that you have over half a century of stories - comics, TV shows, movies to find a white female LI that has a similar storyline. So it should be easy to say to disprove this, not the other way around. It won't have happened in the same way, is my point. Nothing you said is wrong, but neither does anything you said dictate that Iris had to be murdered in the same circumstances she was murdered by Savitar=Barry. Reverse Flash wasn't Barry, even though the name, and Zoom wasn't Barry even though the show tried to cast them in parallel storylines. The showrunners couldn't imagine a storyline where a version of Barry murdered his white parents but they were A-OK with dreaming up one where he murdered his black fiancee?

It's Hollywood America, where the White Hero saves the day because at its heart, underneath all history of rape and theft, slavery, colonialism and genocide America is noble and aspirational. On a lighter note, I like the hilarious almost lampshade-hanging that the show did to explain why Kirkman has a never-before-heard-of brother.

Whelp.

I've always found the haters a reliable measure of how well or badly Iris is being treated on this show.

Yes. Give me one example of a super-hero/fantasy/sci-fi story where any version of the hero, mirror-evil, doppelganger-version or otherwise, murdered the white love of his life to save his own. They could have explored this in a variety of ways without having Barry himself be her murderer. That they did it this way only happened because she was black.

Bingo.

I'm going down the official twitter feed and it's gloriously full of Iris and Westallen goodness.

It was all part of the same thing, as far as I can tell. They also retconned when Barry made the time remnant from before she dies to after she dies, which doesn't even make any kind of thematic sense because it meant that Barry needed her to die first to do "whatever it takes" to stop Savitar, and he deliberately created a time remnant knowing that it would kill Iris. That fans are even arguing this, and trying to come to terms with the storyline is just evidence of how offensive it is. Obviously. It's a storyline that would never be touched if Iris was white. Moving forward, I was surprisingly pleased with how well Iris was written last night. When she had the first hallway talk with Ralph and he ranted about her not knowing what it felt like to be in danger, I expected that Savitar would not be brought up, and I wasn't not disappointed. What did shock me was when it came up in the end! On top of that, her status as a journalist was addressed, tied into the main plot, and there was even a resolution to that in the end. I know it sounds ridiculous, because it was obviously an Iris-centric episode --- but I was shocked at how Iris- centric the episode turned out to be. Had Iris and Ralph ever had one-on-one conversations? Because I don't remember it. Nor do I remember Iris and Joe going on a mission together on this show. Or Caitlin being presented as such an Iris-fan and the two women interacting so friendly towards each other, instead of just stepping around each other. Between this and the last episode, Iris is being written exceptionally well. Does anyone have a way of knowing the last episode Andrew Kreisberg had creative control of? I'm testing a theory.

Everyone is praising this episode to the high heavens.

It's telling how much Iris's non-reactions has been normalized that when someone thinks of what changed for Iris with Flashpoint, they jump to "oh, she just had a small tiff with her dad", and not "she dies before her next birthday". Because, let's face it, Iris's death wasn't about her. It was about Barry. I actually won't have minded that threesome relationship with Savitar and Barry. Just kidding. But in seriousness, I can't get over the fact that someone in the writers's room thought that an appropriate storyline for their kids-friendly (and that's why we can't show Westallen kissing passionately - because it's for kids!!!) show should have an arc where the Hero wanted to murder the love of his life. And that Savitar admitted that he was still in love with Iris/wanted Iris for himself? That was hella disturbing. I guess that rather than have parents explain to their children that "Iris and Barry are kissing because that's what grown-ups do when they love each other very much", it's far easier to have this conversation: "sometimes when a man loves a woman very much, he kills her, and if he fails and he's sorry, she's going to forgive him because that's what you do when you love someone."

Rather than the show having gone downhill, I think it's vastly improved this season. (High praise coming from me, considering some of the stuff I've posted here before). And a lot of that improvement had to do with the show finally treating their leading lady like a leading lady.

Well Sansa isn't a real person. And Show Sansa isn't the fully realized invention that GRRM came up with. So I don't see the difference between issues with D & D versus issues with Show Sansa whom D & D have basically re-created, and they way they cut off other characters at their knees so that Sansa can stand tall over them.

The Iris resentment started from the moment Candice Patton was cast, before an episode of the show had ever aired. While I'm sure a lot of people genuinely feel surprised that she's getting so much screentime after being sidelined for so long, a great deal of people would still resent her screentime even if she had been front and centre from the beginning.

I don't think anyone wanted to see Sansa get raped by Ramsay. The entire storyline was ridiculous and in poor taste and failed from a story-telling perspective (Sansa didn't need to be raped to be motivated to hate the Boltons .... unless it says something about D & D's perception of her character that they think that love for her murdered family was not reason for her so....) to say nothing of the entire theme of Too Much Rape that the show had become that season. Can't speak for any one else but for me, it's two things: from the fandom, the insistence that she's beyond reproach, the retroactive excuse/vindication of her actions, and the insistence that Sansa should essentially, by upgrading from Joffrey to Jon, come full circle and be gifted the same reward that inspired her betrayal; and from the writers, their insistence on white-washing her actions, portraying her as some sort of political bad-ass and not someone who survived because of Littlefinger's reverse Oedipal obsession with her, and of course, to do all this, they need to dumb down every other character for her sake. Basically every-time a character talks to Sansa on the show, they need to lose IQ points. Exactly my point. In the book, that First Flight scene goes completely differently - with Dany not abandoning anyone but rather rescuing Drogon who is the one being lured, trapped to be murdered. She leaves a position of safety to save someone else. And it's insightful that as pointed out, while D&D re-wrote that scene to demonise Dany, they scrub out Sansa's less explainable actions from the show:

LOL! Good point.

@doram I googled it, and I see what you mean. Watch me lose all respect for him. What an a--hole. Black men like him make me sick. Consider that post deleted from the multiverse.

I thought it was lulzy. She's basically asking Barry to save herself and it's structured like if it's this profound declaration of love. Definitely agree though that Iris West Allen rocks. Can't wrap my head around anyone arguing that Iris is a Mary Sue and that she's side-lining Cisco/Caitlin in order to be relevant. Wells outlived his usefulness since season 1, and he basically exists to keep the White Male demography a majority. Ralph is the single most redundant, useless character that the show has ever had, and he eats time from everyone! Joe as a detective, Vibe/Killer Frost as The Flash's co-heroes, and everyone as a member of Team Flash. The show couldn't accommodate Wally as Barry's mentee/meta-in-training but it had room for this entirely useless character? Wow, and I just realized that there was no Ralph in this episode! No wonder I enjoyed it so much! And look at that - I literally didn't even realize he wasn't there! That's how redundant his character is. But sure, it's Iris that's the Sue character. Gotta agree with this. The ability to literally stop time makes it look ridiculous that Barry would ever have a problem defeating any opponent.

Well said. If you mean by "typical", you mean the particular class of rich white girls who are cliquey and mean, make fun of anyone who's different (not white, not rich, not abled, not straight), while playing up the victim card anytime they're called out on it? Then yeah, I agree that Sansa is typical. I've always privately felt that it's just another brand of white feminist bullshit that always insists on painting Sansa as this paragon of virtue that deserves the world.

Well this is a weak point right here: My understanding was that the 5 tribes of Wakanda were united in Paranoia, and now T'Challa is pretty much putting a hammer on their nationalist spirit with his new Open Doors policy. Also the fact that the King of Wakanda is basically a benevolent dictator, and their rules of succession/opposition are flaky as hell? A recipe for disaster.

Wait, what? It was a gifset on tumblr. Chris Rock mocks black women? I heard about his "Good Hair" documentary but I thought that was mostly satire, after all he was inspired to do it because of a conversation he overheard his daughter having with a friend.

Ned lost his head because he confessed to treason. He confessed to treason to save Sansa. If he hadn't confessed, and with no other Starks as hostage, he would have remained in the dungeon and the Lannisters would have kept him as a bargaining tool to keep Robb in check. If Ned was still alive, Robb won't have been crowned King in the North, and really, we're talking about an entirely different story at this point. There's no way that Sansa's not betraying her father won't have drastically altered this story. Like @anamika said, playing the "what if?" game is pointless and is a messy way to retroactively vindicate Sansa. NGL, I've wanted Sansa dead since AGOT.

How are the two things even comparable? Killmonger murdered his lover, a woman who trusted him and was an ally. T'Chaka executed his brother, a Wakandan traitor who was in the process of killing another Wakandan. I have a big problem with the idea that T'Chaka is some sort of villain. He obviously has clay feet, but the two circumstances are far from comparable. Burning the herb was strategic - and ultimately vindictive and short-sighted - but it can never be as evil as murdering an ally, a woman who loved and trusted him. Killing his girlfriend was Erik Killmonger's Establishing Character Moment which told us (the audience) that no matter how "noble" and "sympathetic" his motivations were (which I don't even completely agree with - being pissed his father was killed was one thing, thinking that Wakanda owed anyone outside its borders anything was another) in the end, this is still an evil man. \ Larger, more homogeneous cultures have fallen under Western imperialism. And there will always be weak points to exploit. Killmonger found a weak point in W'kabu, T'Challa's BFF. As for poverty and underclass - hierarchy of needs, anyone? The satisfaction of one needs leads to the desire of another. Unless, you're describing Wakanda as this kumbaya-loving utopia, there's absolutely no way the entirety of its population will be living in 100% harmony 100% of the time. I don't think enough credit has been given to Wakanda, for choosing not to conquer the world with its superior technology and military potential. Which is part of what frustrates me about Killmonger's motivations. He believes that Wakanda was morally wrong not to isolate itself when it had the capacity to do more, and completely ignores the fact that Wakanda's choices not to interfere also protected the rest of the world from being overwhelmed by it. Wakanda could easily have been The Colonizer, and the Empire of Wakanda that Killmonger envisioned is something that could have already been in existence if its leaders had had different ideals. That no one ever stops to consider that, and commend Wakanda for choosing to use its superiority to improve its own people and subdue others, in the movie is irritating.