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Katsullivan

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Everything posted by Katsullivan

  1. Did Barry run back to save Wally or to save everyone who, if I remember correctly, were paying the price for his happiness? I imagined that included Joe "I Needed The Love of Barry Allen to Save My Life" West, and the West "Barry Made Us A Home" family. That would involve running back a bit further than three hours. To say nothing of Eobard's own warning that everytime Barry used his speed, he "lost" his memories. So he basically had one shot to fix everything. Barry murdering his mother to hold onto his powers was definitely not the story they were trying to tell so I find it interesting when people put a spin on things that are explicitly stated in canon. Basically, a lack of objectivity to further an agenda. In this case, the agenda that justifies the portrayal of a Black woman being murdered by her White lover on "family family" TV.
  2. Depending on the agenda that's being pushed, I guess. Which is either the agenda of accepting what the show has consistently presented us - that there is no sibling relationship between Iris and Barry - or an agenda that is determined to dismantle/dismiss/deride any representation of interracial romance on TV. Which, as I said, is the whole point of the "desexualization" of their relationship.
  3. The point wasn't that they pen a budget heavy episode with loads of CGI and intense action scenes. There's a difference between a 'breather' episode that still keeps the dramatic momentum of the story and a 'comedy' episode.
  4. Anyone watching the last few episodes of this show would wonder if Barry is about to lose his fiancee or his sister. which, I imagine, is the entire point.
  5. No, that's the only damned thing on the table that they know will fail. History (or the past) has conclusively shown them that Savitar will be trapped and he will get out and he will come after Iris. He's a time-traveller. No matter when they trap him in time, he can always go back to the time he needs to be in to kill Iris. The fact that they are literally planning to repeat a failed venture is just one of the more ridiculous things about this entire plot. The paradox storm was caused because Eobard was erased from existence so the timeline he created (where Nora died, 'our' timeline) was supposed to have been erased with him. If Barry stops Savitar from killing Iris, that would erase Savitar from existence, which would also cause a paradox storm. Maybe it's just me but I wonder how much of Barry's coping problems are true to his character and how much are just plot-convenient. For someone who watched his mother murdered and his father unjustfully imprisoned for it, he seemed to be a remarkably well-adjusted young man. I remember distinctly him actually schooling Oliver on loss. He had one opportunity to 'fix' that, and he spent a whole day thinking about it, asking everyone and everybody whose opinion he cared for, before he went ahead and did it - with their blessing - and then he changed his mind.... Zoom murders his father - gives Barry an opportunity to murder him - and Barry doesn't take it. Even as blinded as he was with rage and pain, he still stuck to his 'no kill' philosophy. Suddenly we're supposed to believe that Barry has been nursing an inner Anakin Skywalker all this while? Sorry, I don't buy it. Nothing about this storyline makes sense from a narrative or characterisation perspective. And while it's romantic that we're supposed to believe that Iris's murder is the Rubicon that will make Barry go berserk - the fact that he is the one doing the murdering nullifies that.
  6. Because that would actually make Iris relevant and the showrunners clearly have an agenda against that ever happening.
  7. Here's a question that no one seems to be able to answer or even consider: Why would Barry want Savitar trapped in a Speed Force prison when he already knows that Savitar escapes from that Prison, goes back in time, and murders Iris? He literally already knows that this method is going to fail. Shouldn't he be thinking of doing something - anything - else???
  8. Yeah i figured this is where they were going. :/ Quite certain that this is why there's an instant "bond" between Savitar and Killer Frost. As many people pointed out, there's no reason why KF should have any kind of devotion to any version of Barry Allen... but DP also said that Caitlin and Barry flirted and had a romantic connection in season 1 so it's quite obvious that this show has a specific agenda. When If the show eventually kill Iris off, this bond between Savitar & Frost can always be the foundation of their eventual endgame. I also predict a lot of romantic scenes between this evil!Snowbarry in the next few episodes.
  9. It is out of place and entirely in bad taste that there's a "light" episode after it's just been revealed that Barry is going to someday murder the love of his life. Watch Iris have zero reaction to the fact that the man she loves wants to kill her; Joe be completely impervious to the realization that this boy he raised and became a father too, will someday murder his beloved baby girl; Wally have nothing to say about how Barry ended up being the villain after everything he put him through earlier on the show. At this point, Barry should be considering ending his own life to stop this and some (not all) of Team Flash should be restraining him by appealing to him emotionally and intellectually. This would have been an amazing episode for Iris, to really go into her inner mind and watch her be proactive because the stakes have suddenly tripled for her - she's struggling to save her life, but also Barry's soul, and even her love for him. But no, let's do some amnesia filler episode for crap and giggles.
  10. I still feel slightly murderous whenever I think about that, or that the original script was actually rewritten to erase Iris. LoTR - Return of the King included hundreds or thousands of deaths, rather brutal battle scenes, decapitations, etc. Rated PG-13. The Kings Speech contained no nudity, sex, or violence, but was rated R because of one scene where the Duke of York demonstrates that he doesn't stammer while cursing by saying the F word repeatedly. The TV and movie Standards & Practices people are insane. Only, the MPAA rating for the Flash is the same in seasons 1-3. So this isn't a situation where the Standards & Practice people are asking CWTV to tone down on the sex/nudity of the first few seasons. This is CW claiming that they're censoring themselves because apparently they created the show with an older audience in mind, and suddenly realized that "kids watch the show". You think about it for longer than five minutes, remember that a show like Vampire Diaries that specifically targets young teenage girls exists on the same network, and you realize just how ridiculously flimsy that excuse is.
  11. Barry reasoned that bad guys can't kill his wife if he goes into the past and kills her first.
  12. She couldn't qualify Caitlin x Cisco as platonic fast enough. Apparently, she does know what the word means. She's just selective about what she applies it to. She also stated that Barry has been all about Iris "lately", connoting his feelings as a recent thing, and not something that has been a fabric of the show since the Pilot. Beyond any doubt, this show is definitely going to end on Snowbarry.
  13. I'm going to throw in a contrary opinion here and say that while the show is now doing a bait-and-switch "meta powers make Caitlin evil" for the Killer Frost arc, they've actually been slow-burning Caitlin - not Killer Frost - but Dr. Caitlin Snow herself turning evil since the Pilot. They ended up chickening out for reasons that have already been stated in this forum, but before then, there were clear hints of Killer Frost before Caitlin got powers. She has always been a true neutral, not invested in being a hero, or willing to sacrifice herself or her interests to help others. She's been shown to be literally cruel when upset. Even as recently as 3.07, we've seen this. Even on E2, Killer Frost was affected by the words that E1 Barry & E1 Cisco's used based on their relationship to Caitlin Snow. So the show might now want to tell us that Killer Frost is a different person from Caitlin Snow (because it's clearly just hitting them that if you turn your pet character into a villain, you have to, you know, make her do villainous things and eventually have the other characters eventually treat her like a villains) - but they've been showing us so far, is that Killer Frost is Caitlin Snow.
  14. How has Barry kept his promise to Iris by hugging/ embracing Joe and ignoring her? He made a promise to look after Joe after she dies. He literally cannot keep that promise while she is still alive. Nor can he guarantee that he will keep this promise until he's actually lived through her death. Barry promising Joe to be there for him does not keep Barry's promise to Iris. It just means that if Iris dies and he can't be there for Joe because of his own (Barry's own) emotional devastation, he's going to end up breaking 2 promises. As long as Iris is alive and has a literal deathwatch on her head, she has to be Barry's priority. There is absolutely no stretch of narrative background or emotional integrity or anything resembling logic where Barry returns from a future where Iris is dead --- and feels that reassuring Joe* --- is so important that he basically ignores her. The idea that the showrunners changed the original screenplay by MacKenzie where Barry & Iris apparently embraced appropriately, to something that deprioritized her is precisely the reason why Iris West has become a plot device in a story that should be about her. *Because of course, what every father wants to hear at this point in time is : "Don't worry, Joe. If Iris dies, you'll still have me."
  15. This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is a screencap of a tweet conversation with Carina MacKenzie, the writer of last night's episode and here she clearly implies that it was not her choice to have Barry return to the Present, and ignore his fiancee for her father. It's more than Barry giving Iris a hug, or even a passionate kiss. It's the story narratively setting Barry up to "make as many memories with Iris as he can before he loses her forever", and then his big reunion when he returns to the Present is with Joe. The showrunners have an anti-Westallen/anti-Iris vendetta. It doesn't matter what they do lipservice to.
  16. They - producers/writers/actors, what you said basically. The people who make this show & promote it were talking about a crack ship before an episode of it aired. And actors don't arbitrarily support *anything* that involves their character. Promoting is part of their job description and they are very careful not to promote things against the wishes of their show-runners. Shipping can be such a hot-button topic that showrunners are usually very careful how they navigate it. If DP is promoting Snowbarry before a single episode of the show has aired - before the viewers have been given an opportunity to be invested in the supposed "Epic" Westallen romance that the showrunners are trying to sell - then she's definitely not doing it against the wishes of her bosses. As for the link - well, that's nice but it's not the first time that showrunners have said one thing and turned around and done something completely different where POCs are concerned. From Abbie Mills to Lacey Porter, I've seen shows that run out of the gate heavily promoting their black female leads only to watch as these leads increasingly diminish in importance and story on their shows, to make room for the white characters. I'm not interested in what I'm told. I'm interested in what I'm shown. I'm shown that Iris West is the only main cast member in the entire Flarrowverse that has never crossed over to another show. I'm shown a set was made for Caitlin Snow's apartment so that she could flash Barry her boobs; and Patty Spivot, a 10-episode character, got a set for her home but it's been 3 seasons and Iris never got a place of her own until Barry decided to give her one. (Apparently the big arc of her moving in with Eddie was more about Barry than herself.) I can barely watch 2A because of how embarrassingly insignificant her character was, sidelined in even stories that she was supposed to drive, reduced in one episode to a contractual one-sentence line. Even in this season with its emphasis on her and Westallen, she is nothing more than a plot device and I've spoken at length at how humiliating it was to watch her being dumped by Barry, and accept him back in all gratitude. TL DR... I don't take stock in what the showrunners say about Westallen and Iris. I take stock in what they actually do.
  17. That "Everyone and everything in the show points to Barry & Iris being it" is all the more tragic reason for Iris to be killed off. She'll be Barry's Gwen Stacy. The fact that they were talking about it before an episode of the show had even heard, before the show's own OTP had even been established? That DP herself regularly gives shout-outs to Snowbarry while promoting the show, even while her character was supposed to be having her own epic romance with Firestorm? That the showrunners has hired writers who publicly endorse Snowbarry and hate Iris West?
  18. I was about to point at Naley but realized that someone had already beat me to it. There's nothing "insane" about the "speed" of the Iris/Barry relationship when you remember that they've known each other for over 15 years, and were (supposed to be, the show does a bad job of showing this but they always say it) best friends all this while, and were already as close as any two people could be before they got into a relationship. They share family and friends. When you put this against the backdrop of Iris's looming death, then it becomes even more inevitable. And now I realize that you can add to the list of missed opportunities with Westallen - having them deal with the "go big or go home" aspect of their relationship. They aren't just casual acquaintances meeting each other for the first time, and "giving this a shot". If their relationship fails, it would cause a ripple effect on their lives because they share so much - family, friends, work. We see a glimpse of this for about 5 seconds in the musical. They're not going to cross that line from friends to lovers if they're not completely sure that this is "it". But of course, why should the show deal with that if it means giving Iris a voice, a pov, and something other than just being a plot device for Barry? Anyway, I'm still not convinced that the showrunners don't intend to kill off Iris, if not this season then the next season, and make Snowbarry endgame.
  19. The CWTV is notorious for doing 'bait and switch' where diversity - specifically African-American diversity casting - is concerned. From Pete Ross to Bonnie Bennett, canonically important characters from original source material who are "race bent" end up playing diminished roles in the TV adaptations, and/or are quietly killed off, leaving an all-white cast by the end of the show. So I am quite certain that that was the plan for Iris West. Iris/Barry were not supposed to be end-game & the set up was for her to either remain in unrequited love category, and eventually leave town out of frustration/anger at Barry for his secrets or to get together and die quickly. It's clear in 2A that they intended to write off Iris/Candice if Spallen had been as popular as they hoped. Joe West will eventually die, as all mentors/parent-figures do in this type of story; and Wally West will probably go to another Earth to be the Flash there. At the end of the day, the cast will be lily-white and I'm convinced that the producers still have Snowbarry in mind as their eventual endgame.
  20. LOL. I think only die-hard Iris fans are supposed to remember aspects of her character/personality. I read a fanfiction once that made Francine a military engineer (yay for WoC in STEM!) who was working with original!Wells on a device that could open portals between worlds on behalf of the US government, specifically General Wade. When she realized the dangers of the device, she tried to shut it down, which made her a target. She faked her death in a car crash, used the device to go to Earth-2, and there she had Wally. It's been a while since I read it, and I'm fuzzy on the details, but it had scientist/engineering-genius!Wally West, Iris investigating her mother's past through her letters to Nora Allen and figuring out on her own that the crash was faked. It integrated perfectly into the plot and even sorted out all the stupid inconsistencies of Wells working with Zoom, and not knowing who Jay was or wasn't.... The show repeatedly does the West dirty. Even their beloved Joe has gone from a strong character on his own right to someone who exists to validate Barry. I'll take this to the Lightning Rod thread...
  21. I really, really hope we get to see Barry Allen 1.0 some day on this show - that badass who was so badass that the only way Voldemort his enemies could take him on was to go back in time and kill him as a baby 11-year-old. Similarly, I'd also like to meet Iris West-Allen 1.0 - that equally badass woman that lost her husband but still showed up to work to pen his obituary. Does anyone find it amusing the way no one seems bothered by the headline that says the Flash Vanished? The only thing people ever focus on is the name on the byline. Isn't it just white powder, blue lipstick and a big-ass wig? Then CGI for her eyes? Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see what's so elaborate about her outfit? I would love the idea of KF being a big bad. No matter what they choose to do with her character, I will always maintain that having Caitlin being revealed to be Killer Frost, in league with Eobard Thawne, and evil-all-along in season 1 would have been an epic Heel-Face-Turn (almost as epic as ) that they missed because of TPTB's love for DP. One more reason they should have just cast the older actress that actually won the role, instead of giving it to their fave. They would have written a better story for her.
  22. Well, you said it. The story can't pass the Bechdel test to save its life. The 3 times Iris and Caitlin have talked to each other in 3 seasons, they were both talking about their respective men --- Ronnie, Barry & Jay. I agree that the post-confession tension was wasted. When Barry hugged Iris during Christmas, there was a sense that this would be their last, platonic hug as friends because he was about to cross a line that they couldn't cross back. But in 2 episodes, they are hugging when Iris got her job from CCPN when that was a prime example to show sexual tension between the two. Have them both instinctively reach for a hug, then stop and be awkward about it. Have them navigate awkwardly around each other in front of Eddie and Joe, and Eddie notice and call Iris out on it. Instead of the horrid nonsense we got with Iris/Barry/Linda, create a story where neither is completely right or wrong. I disagree that Barry needs a waiting period to get over Iris. But Iris was also, or would also, be right to be uncomfortable with Barry dating someone she works with and is friends with, especially if Linda gives her the impression that she might be more invested in the relationship than Barry. I think that's your answer right there. Everything about that arc was driven by Plot and not consistent characterisation and it showed. Barry's actions make no more sense than Iris's. It didn't make sense that Barry who is supposed to be savouring every moment of time he has with Iris, the love of his life who has a pending death sentence of months into the future, would want any degree of space from her. It didn't make sense that Iris would be so upset that he wanted to save her life that she would treat him as coldly as she did. However that's not really the discussion here. What's being discussed here is the optics of this story. Iris, a Black woman, had misgivings about her relationship with Barry, a White man. She takes off his ring, but makes it clear that she still wants to be in a relationship with him, and is ready to marry him, for the right reasons. In response, Barry tells her he's moving out of their flat, and in the next episode it's made very clear that they broke up. To all intents and purposes, Barry dumped Iris because she dared to make demands on him. He then decides that he wants her back, and she accepts him without a single word of criticism or challenge because she has, effectively, learnt her lesson. (The lesson being: don't you dare demand more from the (White) man in your life because he has all the power in your relationship). Not a comics book fan so I can't comment on the Linda/Wally aspect of this. Is the show even going there, or are they not making Wally/Jesse endgame? I've heard people complain that they gave TV!Barry Allen the personality of the Comic-book!Wally West, so him dating Linda might be a fall-out of that. Which reminds me again of how Wally West is another criminally mistreated character on this show.
  23. This is so important, I think. It's 2017 and people still talk about how Iris was a damsel in distress in season 1 (bitch where?) but no one remembers that Caitlin Snow, Wells's personal physician did not notice that her patient was not really paralysed from waist down. Can you imagine how social media would have exploded if Iris had been the one to pull that train stunt that Patty did? You don't have to --- Lana Lang does the exact same thing in Smallville to find out Clark's secret, and it's just one more hateful, despicable thing against her character. (Funny enough, Chloe who had been trying underhanded methods for seasons to find same secret never once got called out for her actions). And it's not just fan talk. It seeps into the writing. Iris needed a whole season to mourn Eddie, but no one blinks an eye at Caitlin moving on from her dead husband the moment Jay showed up. Wally West is eviscerated by Barry for keeping Savitar's mental attacks to himself --- but Caitlin deliberately hiding a piece of the Philosopher's rock is never once critiqued? (Being called out by her LI for angst reasons does not count). ^This. Iris in season 2 and following was written to be so inoffensive that she basically disappears from her own stories. Joe discusses which of his sons to give his watch to his daughter, literally sitting right there! He talks to Wally about joining the police force, after emotionally blackmailing Iris to drop off ---- once again, in front of his daughter who is sitting right there! And I won't go into all the emotional labour that we're constantly told that Iris did for Barry when they were children --- she, not Joe, is the only person who's ever believed in his story about his mother's murder. Joe grew to love Barry as one of his own, and he always did right by the boy, but it was 10-year-old Iris West that made Barry know that he was not crazy! And the show completely ignores that. And we're constantly told that they're best friends, but it's entirely one-sided. At least in season 1, we had Barry do lip-service about explaining sciency stuff for articles to her, and he helped her with Mason when her mentor was giving her a hard time. But all the while, he was gas-lighting her about her blog, running her down for putting herself in danger - doing exactly the same thing that he had resented Joe for trying to do with him! He breaks up with her because they don't agree over the Streak. In season 2, Iris is mourning Eddie all by herself while giving Barry all the emotional support, including getting Henry for him when he's paralysed. She's always the one supporting him, and giving him pep talks over Zoom and Patty but Iris gains and loses her mother and fiance in a year and who supports her? Who gives her pep talks? Even in season 3 in a storyline that should be all about her, she still takes the backseat. Her death is about Barry, Joe and everyone else except her. We got one lousy episode where she spoke about wanting to leave her mark in the world, and Barry "reassures" her that she's worthwhile because of all the emotional importance she has for him! WTF? Homegirl should have slapped him across the face. I won't even go into the nonsense that was Barry dumping her, leaving her unprotected and alone in his loft, and then using a fricking musical to figure out that he wanted to run home to her. That was an insult to black girls everywhere. Iris has to break in the middle of strategising for her protection, to point out that Caitlin needs saving too. Of course, Caitlin never returns the favour. Later, she needs to be begged to save Iris, and then she threatens to use her powers to kill her. She keeps a piece of the stone even though she was told at the time, that destroying the entire stone was necessary to protect Iris. Imagine if these two women were swapped - Iris and Caitlin - in these situations and how differently the fans and the writing would have treated them. Forget "nice black girl". Iris is written more like a "strong black woman." Thank you. Iris was berated for this when Barry was really the ass in this situation.
  24. I will never get over how completely Barry Single-White-Femaled himself on Earth-2. He just goes home with Iris and forgets completely what he came for. The mission, Jesse, everything. It took the metas showing up at Jitterbug for him to remember that none of this belongs to him. Jo(seph) lies dying and he's screaming about how he needs to be there for Iris because she's his family when Iris's husband, Barry-2 is right there. The more I think about it, the more I realise that we have no idea at what point Barry was going to stop this charade of his. Did he plan to keep Barry-2 locked up in Star Labs forever? Was he ever going to go back to Earth-1?
  25. ??Next time, ask this group of 'fans' if they're looking forward to GoT in July and whom they ship John Snow harder with - someone who (fans have speculated since book 1) is his biological aunt or one of two who are either his half or foster sisters.
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