#arrowverse is whack

[talas-first-lady]

Every other superhero in the arrowverse: Wow, taking care of a city is hard, but I'm a professional! I can do this! I only occasionally have to deal with threats out of my paygrade

The Legends, running around whacking Demons, speedsters, assasains, time pirates, and other magic bs with various cleaning supplies: This is fine :D (Something blows up in the background)

[uselessnocturnal]

Stupid for You

olivarry secret santa 2018 | blind date

summary;; it starts with a blind date and a mistake but slowly becomes so much more.

notes;; This is my Secret Santa gift to @likeaspeedingarrow and I think I managed to combine elements from all the tropes you gave me :) I hope you like it and happy holidays! // special thanks to @temmie-loony and @zealousconnoisseurrebel for helping me out

read the full fic on ao3

—————————————————

Barry has been waiting in Stubbs for twenty-seven minutes now. The waiters have started giving him pitying looks as they serve him yet another glass of tap water – even the lady sitting in the corner of the café shoots him a sympathetic glance over the rim of her mug before returning to an animated conversation with her friends.

Fingers drumming against the marble table, he ducks his head, feeling oddly exposed sitting in the centre of the coffee shop alone at a table for two. His phone lights up and his heart leaps to his throat, having finally been acknowledged.

the best: sorry, barr! i’m going Christmas shopping with eddie

nerd: you only have two days left!

nerd: how have you not bought everything?

the best: i know i know sorryy

the best: rain check?

It takes all of Barry’s self-control not to groan out loud. It’s not the first time Iris has cancelled plans with him for her most recent love interests (in this case it’s Eddie but the difference is that Barry actually likes this guy). He’s not jealous in any way – Iris is practically his sister! – in fact, he’s happy for them; even then, it would have been nice if she’d texted him before he ended up humiliating himself in his sad isolation.

For goodness sake, everyone thought he had been stood up by a blind date! A single half-eaten slice of cheesecake sits temptingly in front of him – a pity gift that the waiters blessed upon him. It would’ve been humiliating if the cake hadn’t tasted so good.

All things considered, though, he couldn’t be too bitter. It’s some twisted sense of tasting his own medicine – especially since he’s definitely left Iris waiting at least an hour and a half before at some convention.

He’s just about to leave when his eyes flicker to the door, its bell still ringing and everything stops.

Oliver Queen walks through the door. Oliver-freaking-Queen.

There’s a surprising lack of reaction amongst the other patrons – either they don’t notice (too distracted by their own conversations) or they don’t recognise him. Heck, Barry’s not even sure if it actually is Oliver Queen; the man is only wearing a thin autumn jacket over a shirt and jeans which is ridiculous considering the sub-zero temperature outside.

Barry is frozen. Every thought in his brain is screaming for him to get a grip and look away or act casual or something – anything is better than blatant staring! Really, who can blame him. Oliver Queen is a god walking the mortal grounds. Everything from his clear but guarded blue-green eyes and his muscles to his confidence and the way he can silence a crowd with a single look. If Oliver Queen claimed the sky was purple, several would probably actually check.

Though not exactly a celebrity, the Queens are relatively well known: especially with Robert Queen getting lost at sea and the consequent plummet of Queen Consolidated. Oliver Queen himself had been a bit of a legend before, having been a well-known billionaire’s playboy son. Now, however, he seems to keep to himself, slowly building his father’s company back up and keeping away from the tabloids. There really isn’t that much Barry knows about him – except that Oliver is very hot.

Barry is still watching at Oliver as the man scans the room. Next thing Barry knows, Oliver has those demanding blue eyes fixed on him and is striding in a clear and direct path to Barry’s table.

He’ll deny it in the future, but he panics.

There are literal seconds before Oliver reaches his table and, in true Barry Allen style, he tears his gaze away and attempts some semblance of nonchalance by jamming his glass to his mouth before realising that it’s empty and now he looks like even more of an idiot.

Whether Oliver doesn’t notice or chooses to spare Barry the humiliation, it’s a true blessing that he decides not to mention anything.

Oliver stops by the empty seat opposite Barry and Barry makes proper eye contact for the first time. There’s a slight tilt in Oliver’s lips – the kind of framed smile that people have as they’re about to make an important business transaction. And yet, Oliver shifts his weight from one foot to another, his eyes slightly uneasy.

He’s nervous, Barry realises, along with something along the lines of whythefuckohmygoshwhat.

“Hi...ah,” Oliver begins his question with a lack of fluency that is uncharacteristic for him, “are you my blind date?”

Now, Barry’s had a lot of shocks today and it seems to be snowballing to become even more chaotic but this? This was ridiculous.

All it takes is a single question to unleash the rambling mess that is Barry Allen.

It’s as though he’s lost his brain to mouth filter and his limbs aren’t even functioning properly and oh gosh is he trying to stand up?

“I’m Barry,” he introduces, scrambling up to shake the other man’s hand, almost knocking over his glass, “I’ve been here for quite a while...not that I’m trying to make you feel bad! I just - uh -”

Oliver takes Barry’s warm hand in his own, skepticism colouring his eyes.

“Right - ah - sorry,” Barry’s head lowers praying that the burning in his cheeks isn’t obvious, “Should we sit down? I think- I think we should sit.”

With all the grace and poise of a CEO in the making, Oliver takes the chair opposite Barry’s, barely drawing any attention to his practically incoherent speech.

���Oliver Queen” he reinforces, smiling slightly in the hope that it’d put the young man at ease, “it’s nice to meet you, Barry.”

There’s almost frantic head bobbing, “Yeah, I know. That you’re Oliver, not the second part,” he winces, suddenly realising how creepy that sounds, “I’m sorry, I tend to go off when I’m nervous, I’ll stop now. It’s nice to meet you too. You can have some of this cheesecake.”

Letting out a less-than-obvious breath, Barry sinks into his chair, watching Oliver carefully poke at the cake with a fork and praying that maybe - just maybe - he’d be able to control his speech

There’s no obvious sign that Oliver’s getting more comfortable but he’s not leaving either so that’s a good sign, Barry decides. And then it hits him: Oliver’s here on a blind date. He thinks I’m his blind date.

Really and truly, Barry has messed up.

“So, Barry, what do you work as?” Oliver starts, somehow composed despite Barry’s apparent humiliation.

Good. Great. This is a question Barry can answer without messing up. “I’m a CSI at CCPD - assistant CSI actually. I’ve been working there for a couple of years now.”

Oliver nods like that makes sense and hey, maybe this conversation isn’t too bad after all!

“There have been the recent cases,” Barry remembers, his eyes lighting up, “they’re so...bizarre.”

Immediately, he launches into the story of a murder involving a banjo and a microwave and Oliver listens in fascination, a small smile on his face as he listens to the brunette speak with such passion.

“Why a CSI?” Oliver asks, leaning forward in his seat.

Barry pauses, the usual lie already sitting on his tongue instead decides to be honest, “Well, my father got framed for my mother’s murder.”

Oliver stills suddenly, hyperaware of the feelings and guilty for stumbling upon a sensitive topic but Barry carries on, trying to veer the conversation away from this sombre tone, “I am learning to accept it...it’s not easy and I’m never going to stop trying to find the real killer but it no longer plagues me at night.”

He offers Oliver a soft and sincere smile, a show of support that someday it will get better.

“Even so,” Barry adds sheepishly, “I’m a bit of a science nerd so I probably would have ended up in a similar situation anyway.”

He doesn’t really give Oliver time to respond, instead plunging into another unique topic of conversation, “Ya know zombies do exist?” before going on to describe zombie ants and they get sucked in to their own bubble of a world which is all hope and light and God, how did Barry get on to talking about penguins.

“They’re the most loving of all animals!” Barry insists, arms flailing, “they huddle and everything!”

Oliver’s arms rest on the table as he laughs. A true laughter that kind of resounds throughout the coffee shop, the sound of the smile in his eyes overflowing into the air.

It’s that moment Barry knows he really is in trouble.

Watching Oliver grin, all-teeth and eyes, hearing his laughter...Barry knows he would do anything to keep that kind of joy on Oliver Queen’s face. Which is ridiculous because he’s crushing on a guy who thinks Barry is his date when he really isn’t.

This is a mess.

It only gets worse when there’s suddenly a mess of blonde hair and scarf appears in the corner of his vision.

“Ah, hi,” she starts, readjusting her glasses and turning to Oliver, “Are you Oliver?”

One glance at his narrowed eyes and she ploughs on, “I’m so sorry – there was this bus and some really bad traffic and I knew I was going to late…but I’m here now!”

A hesitant laugh escapes her and she sticks out a firm hand, “Felicity. Smoak. Laurel Lance set us up I think?”

The bubble doesn’t pop. It freezes and shatters.

There’s a sinking feeling in Barry’s stomach. Oliver’s eyes widen infinitesimally, not-quite hurt rolling off him in waves, as he turns to stare questioningly at Barry who ducks his head, avoiding further eye contact and hopes that the burning shame is not at all obvious.

The woman, Felicity, holds her hands up and gestures vaguely to the two, “Wait. Am I- am I interrupting something?”

Yes. Barry wants to say but how can he when the situation is his fault anyway.

Through his lowered lashes he can see Oliver tilt his head and put on a half-smile.

“No, not at all. Barry and I were just catching up,” he reassures her with all the ease of a CEO.

Barry’s head shoots up, all too willing to go along with the lie, “Ye-yeah, no, don’t worry about it. I was just leaving.

Stumbling to his feet like a deer just learning to walk - all limbs and no coordination - Barry gathers his jacket up and gives Felicity what he hopes is a reassuring smile but could be mistaken for a grimace, painfully aware that his ears are scarlet and refusing to meet Oliver’s eyes.

“Sorrysorrysorry,” he mumbles - both to Felicity for being in her way and to Oliver for...everything, “it was nice - uh -seeing you, Oliver.”

Head lowered, he speed walks (read: scrambles) out of the café where the bitter wind slaps him.

For a moment he stands there, the chill clawing into his bones, absolutely mortified.

What the hell did he just do?

continue reading here

[bogunicorn]

Love me some SPN fandom clowns but some of y'all have a ridiculously overinflated idea of how much money SPN made lol

Also, as much bad press the finale got CW, the actual fan reaction and ratings and all that... were the same as always. The queer/lefty side of the SPN fandom is very, very over-represented on social media. Realistically, the viewerbase was split down the middle blue and red. There are waaaaay more conservative/Republican/whatever regular SPN viewers than y'all think -- and they're usually over-represented in Nielsen ratings, because they tend to be older and are more likely to be Nielsen houses in the first place.

SPN also makes the rights holders a good little chunk of money from TNT syndication and conventions, which doesn't count toward "money SPN made from airing on the network", really. Not in a way that would determine if they got cancelled or not, anyway. Pedowitz probably wouldn't have minded his steady mid-list show back, but when he teased that on Twitter, I promise you his mind was more on getting people to continue buying absurdly expensive convention tickets despite the pandemic existing and the lack of "future episode"-style mystery. He knows as well as anyone that eventually the main actors won't want to do the intense SPN convention circuit anymore, and as soon as Jared or Jensen drop out for multiple cons a season or decide they don't want to be there at all, whatever profits are coming out of Creation are going to drop like a rock.

I like a "No SPN is why CW finally called it quits" joke as much as the next person, but the fact is that the CW was already a piddly-ass little channel from the word Go that's never once been run by anyone who knows how to make money. Also, the reason the Arrowverse didn't make them actual profit is likely the same reason why Disney blockbusters barely make movie theaters money: the licenses are fucking expensive. Whatever profit was actually made off of Arrowverse, a majority of it probably went right back to DC so they could retain the rights to air the shows in the first place.

I know it's difficult to wrap your head around the idea that a company could run for like 17 years without making any money, but TV and movie studios move around SO MUCH MONEY to get things made that at some point big fucking chunks of that money are just kinda made up lol. I don't mean "money is imaginary", I mean bigger companies like that do a lot of moving stuff around and leveraging debt and making just enough to keep going but not enough to be profitable. CW was also pretty okay at merchandising the fuck out of anything popular, I imagine that helped.

They also didn't just lose SPN, a BUNCH of their shows all ended that season. That's why they pushed Walker so hard; it was one of their only new shows at the time and it had the best chance of pulling some old reliable audiences with it. They were already setting up for a rough new season, and then COVID happened.

Would they still be selling the network if SPN was still on? Probably. SPN survived the jump between TheWB and CW. If the new buyer had seen the value of a reliable little workhorse on the lineup, they'd probably keep them, too. But would they be selling if COVID hadn't happened? Who fucking knows. Maybe. Possibly not. We can't know without more details on exactly how much COVID restrictions fucked over their ongoing productions.

But was SPN the downfall of the CW? No, absolutely not. Someone has to have legs in the first place before you can kneecap them, and CW never grew any lol

ok sorry to make another post about this CW thing but like… again, it’s insane to think supernatural kept the cw afloat when spn would not have made it to s5 let alone s15 without the cw being kind of a shitshow that gave them a pass over and over. the cw kept supernatural afloat for a long time until that relationship developed into the mutually beneficial questionable mess that it was by the time s15 rolled around.

like i used to hang out on the cancellation bear website and other tv rating/cancelled show predicting websites and supernatural CONSISTENTLY was on the brink of being cancelled and in fact in season 6 and 7 got put in the friday night dealth slot… those seasons are the ones that SO CONSISTENTLY get proclaimed as ones that were ‘saved’ by cas or that the ratings only tanked in s7 when they ‘tried to write him off’ but it’s like… they were already in the graveyard slot they were already left to die… the ratings were already bad enough by the time s5 wrapped that they got moved!!! castiel was literally not a factor one way or another!! you stuck tv shows in the 9 pm friday spot to say their goodbyes and gracefully bow out.

supernatural’s saving grace was literally that it was on the cw so its shitty garbage ratings were enough to scrape by and the fact that its small audience was reliable meant that it was more economical for the cw to eventually move it OUT of that timeslot and pair it with new shows because that audience generally did not waver even when they were put in the death slot. fridays usually lead to a dip in ratings so if ur already cancelling a show, it doesnt really matter. spn’s ratings didnt dip all that much in the death slot. so the cw was like ok these collective 5 live viewers will show up no matter what so we’ll pair them in a better timeslot with some of these new shows we want to get eyes on and hopefully that will give those new shows AND spn a boost and that generally became the cw’s model for dealing with supernatural for the rest of its days. making and marketing new shows is EXPENSIVE. betting on a new show that would pull in optimistically the same or maybe a little more views than supernatural or possibly even less is a bigger risk than filling one of your timeslots with your hunk of junk that still functions well enough at the end of the day to do what you need it to do. THATS why mark pedowitz etc ended up saying spn would keep airing as long as j2 still wanted to do it. it’s bc their ratings were not astronomical but they DID NOT WAVER. and so they were reliably a good show to have to pair with new stuff and the cw was happy to keep doing that.

supernatural would not have made it past s3 on in order to develop that consistency without the cw being a tiny baby network without views or profit like i dont know how to explain to you guys that your jokes are as usual entirely based on misinformation.

[deanwasalwaysbi]

How cool would it've been if in the last episode, they'd saved Cas from the empty, destroying it in the process and causing it to spit back out everyone they'd sent there over the years.

You’ve got your welcome familiar faces like Gabriel, Hannah, Balthazar, Crowley and Meg. But you’ve also got it spitting out the likes of Lucifer, Alistair, Azazel and literally every demon they’ve ever killed with that knife.

Get rid of purgatory two while your at it. If they wanted to reset the characters to square one that is how to do it. Let them face the same problems having grown as people and with a lot more allies and a place to call home instead of a pair of brothers living out of their car.

That’s how I would have ended Supernatural. Back to square one. Go. Standing back to back in a field and so ready for whatever gets thrown at them. (And just begging for a movie spinoff/follow up.)

I really thought that was what they were doing at the beginning of Season 15  - That we would have a final season full of nostalgia overlaying the plot because Chuck had opened the gates of hell. that worried me but there was a way to do it well, facing old nightmares and realizing how much they’ve grown. 

A restoration of the angels could be a huge penance for Castiel who has immense guilt having had such a hand in their all but annihilation, but I don’t want tfw at square one at the finale, I don’t want their 15 years of suffering to have been futile.  Though tbh that’s the problem with the finale we got.  The brothers really do end at square one, alone, with no direction.  Doomed to aimlessly crisscross the country playing monster whack-a-mole.  They have grown, they have people, they have a found family, and ... where are they?

Upsetting everything they had ever done to get a loved one back is a classic vintage Winchester move.  On the one hand like - in character and YES Dean doing it for someone he romantically loves instead of his brother - on the other have they not grown?   Or maybe it happens but everyone’s evaluation of who is good and who is evil needs to be recalibrated in terms of Chuck and the meta narrative.  If they were going to go where they did, instead of Lucifer being an evil shit, he could have been cleared of the mark’s effects and shitty but vindicated in his assessment of Chuck like - he was right and the show and the brothers never acknowledge it.

There was too big a set up with no pay off, and I don’t think I can accept any season 15, any finale, that does not get epic.  Where is my interdimensional showdown?? (even if it would feel VERY C*w right now bc of the arrowverse) - Where is my coalition of Sams & Deans? Where are the earth prime Winchesters fighting separately and leading different fronts: Sam leading the coordinated interdimensional spell work against Chuck while Dean leads a more physical assault against Chuck’s forces or the Empty to save Cas and Jack.

It would be a way to bring back any characters they chose through the power of the multiverse.

I forget whose post it was that pointed it out, but Dean leading an assault on the empty to save Castiel would bring the narrative through its full circle from Castiel leading the assault on hell to save Dean. The narrative symmetry was set up so perfectly, and covid or no covid, it looks like they never recognized it.  

My idea of an ideal reboot would completely erase episodes 19&20 and be a 6 episode fix it. At this point the first failure raised the bar for what I would and would not be willing to accept. If they are not going to show an explicitly reciprocal Dean I don’t want one. 

[lovevalley45]

"there will be brood" thoughts pt. 1

damn that sure is a way to start

Oh No

that explains the neon lighting in the lab

OH FUCK

well shit there's half the team stuck at john's

did bishop just make everything neon for fun

ASTRA MAKING HERSELF A SNOWGLOBE

astra: get ur hands off me

zari insulted him for his turtlenecks but they suit bishop quite well ngl

ASTRA NOT HAVING A DRIVER'S LICENCE KFF

howdy howdy howdy

ooh spicy

also i love them still in their modern day clothes

astra did roll up in there like "bitch,"

ODESSA TEXAS

fun fact i've always liked the name odessa

oof ouch that hurts

shared mommy issues

mushrooms,,, being an alien species,,,,

new arrowverse lore dropped

this is very close to john pluckin a random mushroom n eating it

oh that's her daughter/young spooner

john what u up to

SECRETLY FROM THE PAST

i freaked out when she introduced herself to esperanza n my mom was like ????

astra looks like she's abt to go n whack john's shit right here right now and honestly,,, valid

[snackaston-reese]

People calling Lena a cold-blooded murderer for killing Lex are whack. Like y’all do realize that the entire arrowverse started over a character who became a vigilante and killed bad people because he thought he was protecting his city and the people around him right? Oliver is a hero but Lena is a pariah because of those actions and that makes no sense

[kleptoandpyro]

Barry Allen + Alcohol

Arrowverse Headcanon #4 (+ Joe West)

I can’t stop thinking about Drunk!Barry at his bachelor party and what probably happened.

Because seriously you know this dumbass bitch got so whacked on that Speedster alcohol that he just turns to Joe like, "wE should totally invite Snart, I even have his nummber!"

Joe: *snaps himself in two reacting* No Barry that is a terrib- Barry: *flinches* Joe: ... Joe: You just texted him at super speed didn't you Barry: *smugface*

Much later that night there'd be a knock on the door and Joe would answer it and see Snart stood there with Barry over his shoulder like, "Does this belong to you."

Joe: Barry?! He's been missing for hours! Where the hell did you find him? Len: I came home and found him crying on my doorstep Joe: Barry? Barry: hE nevEr responded to my text and I thhhhought he was dEad *hic*

Other Hcs:

(If Len had met Constantine) (Why Len Doesn’t Drink) (Len the Team Mom) (Len Vs the Brig)

[dykerachelsummers]

imma be real i didn’t read the whole list so i’m just gonna put random numbers so uhhhhh: 2 ;) (that one i did read), 12, 20, 22

2. do you like the arrowverse? if so what’s your favorite show?

ABBY YOU KNOW I HATE ARROWVERSE WITH A FIERY PASSION. SIS. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME. ugh black lightning is the only stannable arrowverse show. lot is okay and gay but i never watched past s1

12. favorite animated movie?

justice league: war is so fuckign bad but owns my ass bc it’s so funny. the scene where hal tries to attack darkseid, gets whacked outta the air, n then gets the shit beaten outta him by a bunch of parademons? g-d tier. honorary mention to wonder woman (2009) bc im dyke and that version of artemis is the specific reason why

20. young justice (show) or teen titans (show)?

um. er. i cant choose bc tt03 was one of my fav shows as a child but yj had artemis crock and i AM a lesbian. but tt03 had raven and like. goth gf. what do u expect from me. actually i choose yj bc i like their dick better

22. favorite robin?

ok i wanna say steph bc she’s my amazing and i stan but actually it’s dick bc he’s my fav dc character so like. hrng. yeah stan dick grayson

send me dc asks!

[bart-allen-speaks]

What do you think of the Arrowverse and his version of your grandpa ?

What the hickity heck knick knack paddy whack is an "Arrowverse"?

[prettylittleliarsxxxx]

This is the shot: A slim, twentysomething white man, pale and dark-haired, waits in the center of the frame, head tilted fractionally to catch a glimpse of something (someone?) the viewer can’t see. He is wearing a dark jacket with a high collar, and a dark ball cap, even though he is inside, even though it is night. The collar is pulled up to obscure his too-romantic silhouette; the cap is pulled down to obscure his too-soulful eyes. This is the kind of man who literary heroines—or at least literary-minded ones—swoon over, but with so much of his face obscured, it is only his cheekbones, high and almost too pronounced, that signal such classic desirability.

Such a signal is important. Because everything else about this shot shouts that this man is a stalker: From the blurring of important details in the background, to the juuuust too-closeness of it, to the shadows cast from odder angles than seem natural, every aspect makes us want to scream at the heroine, RUN AWAY, LEAVE, HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE WHO THIS PSYCHO IS???. And so we need something, some small thing, to remind us, when this man is not actually dressed to kill, when he’s not staring at the device he’s got tracking her every digital step, why she can’t see what we see. And that small thing is: He is attractive.

Duh.

This, of course, is why this man’s story works. The fight-or-flight reflex his behavior should provoke in the object of his obsessions is counteracted by his charming physical appeal—lust, at least initially, wins out over fear, and as it does, provides the tension necessary to drive the narrative we keep tuning in for.

The trick is, how the show wants to resolve that tension is a question of cultural time. As in, when the handsome stalker was Ezra Fitz (Ian Harding) in Freeform’s teen thriller, Pretty Little Liars, just four short (long) years ago, the romantic hero vs. predator tension was invoked only as a means of creating a temporary road block to eventual nuptial bliss between A Good Man and his (high-schooler) sweetheart. Now, when the handsome stalker is Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) in Lifetime’s adult thriller You, here in the year of Goddammit Are We Collectively Still Not Taking #MeToo Seriously (a.k.a. 2018), the tension is very clearly meant to resolve not only in Joe’s psychopathy being found out, but in his sweetheart’s (and our) delusions of obsession-as-romance shattering completely.

Understanding that this is You’s endgame is helped, of course, by the fact that (spoilers) Joe straight-up whacks a romantic rival in the skull with a book mallet in the series’ pilot, then kills him with peanut oil after holding him hostage for all of episode two. But even if he didn’t go that far, that early, series creators Greg Berlanti (of the Arrowverse) and Sera Gamble (of The Magicians) make no effort to suggest that we in the audience should be ambivalent about Joe’s character, who addresses the narration of nearly every sequence to an idealized fantasy of Beck (Elizabeth Lail), the “you”-object of his affections, whom he spies from the other side of the book shop he manages in the series’ opening scene and immediately starts scheming to own. In fact, if Berlanti and Gamble make any effort in any direction, it is to keep reminding us that Joe is bad: Take centuries of art romanticizing the unwavering fixation of a handsome man on a single woman and add to it the sea of mundanely callous dudes in the modern dating scene, and you get an audience that’s been trained out of any ability to keep an attentive, clever, present guy, who likes books and making jokes and who is, on top of it all, moppily handsome, at any kind of wait-and-see remove. Like cognitive behavioral therapy, but for the propagation of violent loopholes in rape culture—without intervention from the puppeteers behind Joe’s dark adventures, we might trip over those loopholes and fall to our Joe-shaped doom.

It’s tempting to think that they aren’t doing this, as so much of You is staged as the exact kind of dreamy romance Joe imagines himself to be facilitating and Beck believes herself to be living. Each episode opens on a series of slow, bird’s-eye pans of New York City in early autumn, set to some kind of unobtrusively sweet indie-ish acoustic background music. Scenes with Joe and Beck together are filmed with a warm, golden filter, the background details and even the edges of the foreground taking on a comfortable kind of soft-focus that seems to snuggle them together like a big, metaphorical duvet. If they are outside, the melody of bird song is prominent. If they’re inside, the shush of pages turning and life being lived together is turned high. But when juxtaposed with the brittle, hard-focus, doom-soundtracked reality of the scenes of Joe’s life outside of his and Beck’s “romance,” the delusionally fantastic nature of those softer scenes is made obvious: They are all in Joe’s head, and while Beck may be living in the same fantasy at the moment, Joe’s head is a bad, dangerous place.

“Yeah, but he loves her, but he’s sweet, but it’s a love story!” Badgley imagined eventual fans arguing when he and Lail sat down for an interview with E! News earlier this summer. “In what world?! I don’t believe that’s love. I don’t think that love equals this, so I think we have to question, what is love, and if we think this is love, where are we mistaken?”

Where is throughout all of hetero-romantic pop culture. More acutely, where, I would (and already started to) argue, is in Pretty Little Liars, which not only features Joe’s stalker ancestor in the form of Ezra “I’ll Be Watching You” Fitz, but is in actuality one of the two other shows about attractive young people swept up in cyberstalking that every elevator pitch of You invokes. (The other, of course, is Gossip Girl. ) I spent the better part of three years and many hundreds of thousands of words arguing exactly how many rape culture/toxic masculinity balls Pretty Little Liars and the creator-blessed endgame of #Ezria dropped, so I neither need nor want to retread rageful ground here. But I do need to point out that none of those elevator pitches invoking Pretty Little Liars are doing so for the fact that You is finally juggling all the poisonous balls PLL, and, in its earlier way, GG, let fall—they’re doing so because stalking is a superficial thread throughout all three, and because You’s stars include PLL’s Shay Mitchell and GG’s Badgley. That’s it.

The thing is, the fact that You is treating the subject of violent masculine entitlement and obsessive, possessive “love” with more deadly gravity than either of its teen predecessors isn’t subtle; watch the first five minutes of the pilot and you’ll get that. But that’s the point I’m trying to make: You have to watch the first five minutes of the pilot to see it. If you just look to the promo interviews and red carpet soundbites and fluffy entertainment news tweets and headlines, our collective inability to accept the violent potential of the bad men in our midst is laid bare: Joe’s psychopathic character is translated as him being a mere “creepazoid,” according to the photo caption in Vulture’s review, while You itself is cheerfully summed up as a “messy, murderous romp.” According to a teaser interview with Entertainment Tonight last fall, Mitchell declared the show to be “juicy… It still has all those elements that PLL had with it being sort of a mystery, there’s a romance part to it and it’s just exciting.” Back on E! News, while the article anchoring Badgley and Lail’s interview sports the title, “Penn Badgley Is ‘Really Troubled’ By Anyone Thinking You Is a Love Story,” it eventually can’t help but suggest that, “What Joe does is not really harassment from what Beck can see, but from the viewer’s perspective, it’s not quite not harassment and also not quite not [sic] love.”

!!!!!!!

It’s true, as Kathryn VanArendonk argues in that Vulture review above, that the tone of You isn’t steady, but I’d argue in response that this is less an indicator of the show not being serious enough to be more than a romp, and more a reminder that we are not, as a species, that great at metabolizing the idea that multiple, contradictory things can be true about a person or a situation at the same time. Especially if that person is a man, and especially if the contradictions involve a woman. I am filing this piece on the weekend before the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to hear testimony in the alleged violent attempted rape of a 15-year-old girl by then-17-year-old Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and likely no one reading these words is unaware that “boys with be boys,” “that was just horseplay,” and “what is harassment anyway???” have resurfaced, in response, as an apparently reasonable foundation for the debate between men’s ability to gain fame and fortune and women’s basic humanity. “Two things can be true at the same time” has become a kind of clarion call across justice-minded social media, but that doesn’t mean it has been absorbed by everyone, on every level.

And so we get: Romp. Juicy. Romance. Not quite harassment. We get Ezra Fitz as pop culture’s most recently successful romantic stalker model. We get the urge to make excuses and carve a path for a bad man’s not-all-badness, even being inside Joe’s head in a way we could never be in Fitz’s, even knowing how he thinks, how he watches, how he transgresses Beck’s digital and physical privacy—even knowing how he murders people to get closer to her. We get that urge because we are also getting Joe swinging from murderously delusional to relatably jokey (his inner monologue as he disposes of his romantic rival’s body in episode three, and later as he picks up jogging to better follow Mitchell’s Peach, is particularly funny) to empathetically invested in making the daily life of his neglected kid neighbor just a bit richer and safer and less sad in a way that isn’t inconsistent so much as it is human, and in its humanity is challenging for us to accept.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the most emphatically unequivocating take I’ve found on the non-romance of You comes from Badgley himself, whose every interview has centered his utter rejection of anything positive one might try to shake out of Joe, or Beck, or Joe and Beck’s “relationship.” One of the most illuminating is the one he did with Devon Ivie at Vulture. It is worth reading in its entirety, but his response to why he took on a stalker role now, in 2018, stands out:

“Now that we’ve made the first season and I’ve been gauging reactions with critics and friends and viewers, I can say there’s a certain accountability—an emotional and psychological responsibility—that we hold the viewers and Joe to. It’s not this wildly irresponsible, escapist fantasy at the perfectly wrong time. I think the show came out at the right time, because any other time, we wouldn’t have had the courage at a social level and have conversations about why we’re drawn to it, but also why we know we shouldn’t reward it. We don’t want to reward Joe more than how he’s already being rewarded.

And as to whether or not he thinks that “viewers will cheer on this depraved man for being a self-described ‘fool in love’,” Badgley responded, “To me, a conversation I hope it starts is, What is it about the show that’s compelling? Why am I watching it? Am I enjoying it? Am I agreeing with Joe? What about all of this do I enjoy most? […] The degrees of which you’re enticed and excited by a show, there’s a lot more scrutiny in terms of the stories we’re interested in telling and consuming—the things we’re still charmed by and attracted to. Because Joe shouldn’t be allowed to behave the way he does. But only the viewer can decide.”

Shortly before Pretty Little Liars was set to air the last half of its seventh and final season, I flew out to Los Angeles to join my co-recappers at the show’s final PaleyFest panel. There were still ten episodes to go before the finale, and we held out hope that the series that had, in its bravest moments, been the most subversively anti-rape culture on television, might be about to burn the whole of Rosewood’s toxic patriarchy to the ground. The viewers who congregated in our comments section every week had certainly decided that that was the only way Pretty Little Liarscould end with integrity. Ten episodes! Ezra could STILL be A! His stalking could be revealed as the toxic danger it always was! But then we got to PaleyFest, and the entire theater was filled with fans whose only interests were the romantic lives of the cast, both onscreen and off, with the #Ezria endgame front and center.

Reader: #Ezria was endgame. And after giving fans like me a single fever dream of the show’s best character beating the daylights out of a jailed Ezra before letting his high-school sweetheart forgive him, the show was so proud of its own cleverness.

It’s 2018 now. #MeToo is only growing stronger as it complexifies, and as more projects like You get made by people who, like Badgley, Berlanti and Gamble, are entirely disinterested in giving bad men a path to not-all-badness. Joe is an outlier, but our willingness to soften the evil of his—fictional, patently obvious, easily condemned—violent obsession is the water we’ve been swimming in for too long. We can decide, as viewers and as people, to start demanding cleaner pools.

You airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Lifetime.

[uselessnocturnal]

Starstruck

karivarry | for @temmie-loony

summary; Oliver has two huge secrets. The first (which is sadly not as well kept as he would have liked) is that he’s the Green Arrow. His second secret, one that he would take to his grave if he could help it but he loves Barry and Kara so goddamn much that they would have found out eventually is this:

Oliver Queen is the biggest romantic.

Meaning that just because Kara and Barry had already proposed to Oliver in what he'd jokingly refer to as the chocolate cake disaster, didn't mean Oliver wasn't going to whisk his partners away for his own special surprise.

notes; This is a special (belated) birthday gift for our biggest karivarry fic contributor - the one and only who I’ve the best time talking to shared some of the best conversations with :) Fun fact: This is kinda low-key based on that one time I snuck out of the boarding house to go star gazing with my friends!

read it on ao3 here

Oliver has two huge secrets. The first (which is sadly not as well kept as he would have liked) is that he’s the Green Arrow. Yes, Oliver Queen likes to don green leather every night and go around saving the city by beating up criminals. At this point, he doesn’t care that so many people know about his secret identity (so long as he trusts them) because ultimately, it makes him stronger. Plus, the unkept secret lead to him meeting the best people in his life - Barry and Kara. There was no question that he may not have made the best first impression on either one of them, considering how he had strangled Barry after he’d just saved Oliver and somehow managed to make Kara ‘sunshine’ Danvers grumpy within the first few minutes of meeting her. Scratch his first statement; he definitely screwed up his introductions with his partners. And yet, the three of them just work.

Their relationship amazes their friends because of the number of ways it could go wrong. Even Oliver, as he lounges on the couch with Kara tucked into his side and Barry curled up on his lap, takes a mental step back to evaluate their relationship and is just slightly dumbstruck by how incredibly happy they all are together.

Leading to his second secret, one that he would take to his grave if he could help it but he loves Barry and Kara so goddamn much that they would have found out eventually.

Oliver Queen is the biggest romantic.

Most would assume Barry would be the one turning up unexpectedly at their work places to make them smile or Kara to force the others to leave their work and go on an actual date (which they actually do). But it’s really Oliver who drops quick texts to his boyfriend and girlfriend every now and then or drags them all to someone’s house for a quiet night together. He’s the mastermind behind their best dates and all three of them know it. He’s the kind of man to remember stupid things like the anniversary of their first date or the first time they were all together and send them flowers to celebrate it.

It’s an affectionate side of Oliver rarely shown to the rest of the world that Barry loves to tease him about, even though the other man can barely hide his own flush of joy whenever Oliver does something like this.

So of course, Oliver has something incredibly elaborate and perfectly romantic planned with Thea to propose to Barry and Kara. Something definitely better than the chocolate cake proposal he’d joke to Thea whilst the fondness in his eyes as he played with his ring told her that it had been anything but a disaster.

He’d bought (yes, bought) a cozy cottage on the outskirts of Coast City - away from both cities and an interdimensional extrapolator and, thus, being called for vigilantism. The rings were safely kept away in a velvet box which he kept on him at all times (so maybe not so safely) and Oliver planned to drive them over that weekend. Even though they had already proposed to him, there was no way Oliver was going to cancel his plans.

He had no choice but to propose to them again (needless to say, he was very excited)

Oliver should have remembered how excitable his boyfriend and girlfriend are. When he tells them that he’s taking them for the weekend, Kara’s eyes light up as she jumps on Oliver’s back and Barry throws his arms around the man and plants a kiss on his cheeks. Everything about the situation makes Oliver’s heart melt and he questions how he could have tried to stop himself from loving when there’s Barry and Kara in the world.

The two are like puppies (Barry would be a beagle and Kara a golden retriever), refusing to leave his side until he gives up where are we going? Ollie, tell us please to which he shakes his head firmly, trying so so hard not to let a smile creep across his face and give away how happy he is to be with them (he fails)

Somehow, he makes it to the weekend without breaking under Barry’s pouting and Kara’s big doe eyes - they tried to seduce him into telling them for goodness sake!

Getting the two into the car...easier said than done. It’s not that he forgot that his boyfriend is a speedster who just runs wherever he needed and his girlfriend is an alien who can fly but he forgot the impatience that came with it. He’s used to driving up a few seconds after them, his motorcycle roaring to a stop and reminding them, super speed - I don’t have it so they’d turn to him with a sheepish grin.

“Ollie, if you’d just tell us where it is I could run over and Kara could fly you over?” Barry suggests, trying to dig information out of his boyfriend though he knows it’s pointless.

Oliver shuts him up with a kiss and they clamber into the car, Barry fake-grumbling in the passenger seat and Kara bouncing in the back because this is gonna be so fun! It’s our first road trip! The line perks Barry up a lot more and he turns around to fight with Kara over music.

The road trip is the best any of them had ever had. There was something about being on the road with the people you loved, having the car filled with laughter and singing and endless complaints of hunger that made the two hour trip a lot shorter and before long, Oliver finds himself parking a short distance away from the cottage.

The suns just starting to set as Oliver leads his blindfolded partners through the greenery. They’ve got both hands on a shoulder each because neither of them have the grace and poise you’d expect and Barry keeps tripping over everything, including Kara and Oliver, so he needs the extra stability (and who’s to say he doesn’t appreciate the extra contact anyway). The walk is a comfortable sort of quiet broken only by Oliver’s warnings, the occasional gasp followed by a giggle. He stops suddenly in front of the house, causing the two to trip into him.

“O-liv-er!” Kara whines as Barry’s arm goes flailing and hits her in the face and they stumble to a stop.

Oliver tries to hide a soft chuckle and turns to face them, leaving them slightly stunned at the sudden emptiness.

“Okay, you can look now,” he breathes, heart pounding with the hope that they’ll like it.

Kara undoes her blindfold first, practically ripping it off whilst Barry struggles a bit, before pulling it away with a triumphant sound, looking smugly at his partners before laying eyes on the cottage.

“There’s a really weak reception in this area and I thought it would be nice to have somewhere we can get away from everyone else,” Oliver starts, “so I bought the cottage and– oomph”

There’s a lot of squealing and breathless ‘I love you’s from Kara as she literally flies into Oliver, a bundle of joy peppering his face with kisses. It looks like something out of a fairytale and it’s everything she’s ever dreamed of having with its thatched roof and roses creeping along the walls in the middle of a clearing surrounded by forest. Barry’s equally in awe, not to Kara’s extent, but he joins in on their little human pile, smothering Oliver who’s laughing and kissing them both until the three of them are just exhausted and they kind of just lay contently on the grass together in silence, watching the purple-orange sky change colour as the sun sinks behind the trees.

It’s so incredibly peaceful and they’re all just so happy to be together when it isn’t a crisis or they aren’t on call. Oliver lies in the middle as the two roll off him and lie on either side, fingers all intertwined and Barry and Kara’s hands resting on Oliver’s chest. It’s a moment that they would want to freeze and treasure forever.

Oliver’s the first to push himself off the grass, breaking through Kara and Barry’s linked hands, ignoring their quiet protests.

“C’mon,” he gestures to the cottage, rolling his eyes when they don’t move, “there’s food inside.”

The two are up in an instant (in a flash, the Barry in Oliver’s head whispers), Barry lifting Oliver’s left hand up to brush his lips across the knuckle where his ring rests and Kara reaching up on tiptoes to plant a soft kiss on Oliver’s cheek.

Oliver doesn’t even try to hide the bright blush creeping across his cheeks as he leads his partners into the cottage.

He can hear Barry and Kara’s quiet but sharp intake of breath as they step through the door, admiring the interior. It’s simple but spacious. There’s a large enough sofa for the three of them opposite a fireplace and in front of a coffee table. Already, Oliver has bought some of their favourite movies (musicals for Kara and Barry and Die Hard for him), which are neatly piled up next to a modest-looking TV. Another door leads to a single bedroom with a king-sized bed.

“Oooh, Ollie, we’re all sleeping in the same bed? Scandalous!” “Barry, we’re engaged.”

The kitchen is just a row of counters, an oven, a stove and a fridge but it’s still lovely and definitely what excites Kara the most because she can’t wait for Oliver and Barry to make a bunch of home-cooked meals.

“Did you do this all by yourself, Oliver?” Kara wonders.

“No…” Oliver admits sheepishly, “Thea designed most of it.” Barry snorts, drawing an indignant look from Oliver that prompts him to divert the conversation.

“You said something about food?” Barry asks hopefully, Kara looking equally starved as well. Oliver lets a fond smile cross his face – honestly, feeding these two is like feeding an entire army – and directs their attention to the multiple already full picnic baskets sitting somewhat innocently on the dining table.

Kara lets out another squeal of excitement and immediately begins loading Oliver and Barry up with baskets.

A wide smile stretches across her face as she turns, empty-handed, towards her struggling boyfriends, “outside?”

Oliver grunts out a yes and rushes to stop her from leaving without them. “Kara, honey, slow down.”

Her green eyes seem to dim a little but don’t lose any of its excitement and she shares an embarrassed smile with him.

When he steps through the door, it’s already nightfall, the sky a lovely blanket of darkness and the air is crisp and fresh. He can just about make out the stars and he thanks whatever deity watching over them for the clear weather.

Gesturing (as well as he can whilst carrying three massive picnic baskets) to the others to follow, he leads them to a little spot at the back of the cottage.

He can hear Barry’s sharp intake of breath and the small squeak that escapes Kara as they lay their eyes on the picnic area Oliver has laid out for them.

“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you Ollie?” A soft smile crosses Barry’s face as he bumps his shoulder against his.

Oliver can’t stop his one of his rare toothy grins from decorating his face. Seeing his partners - his soulmates - so happy and knowing that he is the cause for they're joy is not an emotion he can hide.

It’s honestly quite a simple set up. A large red and white checkered mat (a table wouldn’t fit all the food) is laid out on a clear patch of grass with one of those metal lanterns that Oliver knows Kara adores in the middle. Three sets of plates and cutlery - not the cheap plastic ones but dainty porcelain china plates - have already been laid out so they lounge on the mat and start unpacking the picnic basket.

There’s all sorts of food in there. A few sushi platters (sped into the country by Wally), giant pizzas with a strange variety of toppings, lasagna (Kara’s favourite), macaroni and cheese (Barry’s favourite) and Big Belly Burger because Oliver knows that a hungry speedster and alien will polish off all his homemade food without difficulty and will still want more. And to top it off, he has Alex’s homemade chocolate pecan pie which is definitely their favourite dessert. (Don’t even ask Oliver how he managed to persuade Alex to bake for them - he’s terrified of the woman)

It’s the most bizarre combination of cuisines but Barry and Kara love it and dig in without prompting.

Oliver’s full soon after his second helping of pie - not exactly an unusual feeling for him, he ponders as he watches his partners continue to devour the food, he doesn’t even want to know where it all goes. He continues to steal a slice of pizza every now and then but opts for mostly just talking to his boyfriend and girlfriend.

No matter how date nights they plan, very few actually happen (what with saving the world and all that) and they rarely do get to just enjoy each others company alone. So that’s what Oliver does. He basks in their light-hearted conversation and thrives in their laughter. He only wishes they could do this more often.

“Oh my Rao!” Kara scrambles to her feet, chocolate pecan pie forgotten, and points towards a seemingly random spot amongst the stars.

“What? What is it?” Barry asks eagerly - rising to join her and stare at the sky.

“I saw a shooting star!”

“Of course!” Barry exclaims in the it’s-science-stuff voice that Oliver and Kara think is adorable, “I read somewhere that there was going to be a meteor shower tonight! It’s so great that we can see it from here!”

And as though called upon, a bright dot streaks across the sky trailing light behind it. It’s the  

Oliver, still seated, tears his gaze from the incredible display, fingers drifting towards the little velvet box in his pocket.

“Did you make a wish?” He asks them quietly, not wanting to distract them. They shake their heads mutely, mouth still slightly agape in awe.

“We should make one,” he blurts out, realising just how cheesy it sounds even though he had planned this and oh God his cheeks are on fire thank goodness for the dark, “We should close our eyes and make a wish.”

Kara and Barry pay no attention to Oliver’s flaming face and humour him because a) they’re the best girlfriend and boyfriend in the multiverse and b) they’re actual children and probably would have done it anyway.

As soon as their eyes close, Oliver moves. Barry, he notices, scrunches up his nose and pinches his lips as he wishes and it takes all of Oliver’s willpower not to kiss the man there and then. Kara is a lot more peaceful, her eyes soft and relaxed with a slight smile on her face and Oliver is reminded of just how beautiful she is.

They finish making their wish at the same time (thank God, Oliver would not know what to do if one of them had opened their eyes before the other).

Their eyes flutter open and as soon as they snap to Oliver they freeze. Kara raise her hands to her mouth and Barry is biting his lips and trying so hard not to cry.

Oliver has one knee on the grass in front of them, a wide smile (with teeth!) beaming up at them, a velvet box open and presenting Barry and Kara with two simple, silver rings inside them.  

“Barry Allen and Kara Danvers,” he starts, swallowing the lump in his throat, “We definitely did not meet under normal circumstances. And neither did we get off on the right foot at first” he lets out a quiet chuckle, “But being with you makes me the happiest man alive and I want to spend the rest of my life with that happiness - with you.”

“I know you’ve already proposed to me with the chocolate cake,” a wet laugh escapes the two, “but I guess I wanted to ask anyway: Will you marry me?”

Barry cries.

Kara is close.

It’s not even a question - Kara is bobbing her head so frantically Oliver worries it might fall off and Barry is tumbling over his words (yes, ollie, of course, yes). After Oliver slides the rings on both their ring fingers and stands, the two pull him into a tight embrace.

“I love you so much.” Oliver sighs, his breath tickling their neck. He can feel their smile just like he can feel Kara’s pounding heart and Barry’s tears as they pull away and kiss him on both cheeks at the same time.

He’s so happy one of those soaring meteors could wipe out the universe and he wouldn’t even care as long as he was with Kara and Barry.

It’s a series of returned kisses and I love yous as they tumble back onto the grass, tangled limbs and cuddles until they settle on the grass to admire the last of the meteor showers.

“I can’t believe you planned this whole thing and Kara and I couldn’t even bake right.”

Barry muses, breaking the silence and jarring the other two out of their tranquil state, his joking tone eliciting a long breath like a laugh from Oliver and making Kara giggle and push herself up. Before the two can bring themselves to their feet, there’s a whoosh of air and the ground disappears.

It’s a comical sight to behold. Oliver’s eyes widen as he grabs the nearest thing to stop him from falling off…Kara’s back? He takes a peek over her shoulder to meet Barry’s equally confused eyes from his position in Kara’s arms.

Kara, on the other hand, is grinning like a child on Christmas. In her arms she carries Barry bridal-style and somehow managed to force Oliver onto her back so it looks like her boyfriends are koalas with attachment issues.

The two don’t even begin to question the how instead marvelling at the oh God, our girlfriend is strong. Barry lounges in Kara’s arms, laughing at Oliver’s slightly panicked and flushed expression from his piggybacked position.

“Kara, what the hell,” Oliver grumbles, not really annoyed but definitely a bit embarrassed. His girlfriend shrugs her shoulders somewhat innocently, rocking their very fragile balance and Oliver almost yelps, tightening his legs around her waist.

“God, if only someone could take a photo of us,” Barry moans as Kara starts to walk towards the cottage, staggering slightly as she adjusts to the extra weight.

Oliver shakes his head dragging out a ‘noooo’ even as he smiles against Kara’s neck, face hidden by her golden hair.

They sort of trip back into the cottage and Kara just throws Barry a good thirty feet onto the bed, barely giving him time to recover when she drops Oliver onto Barry so the older man is lying across Barry’s stomach. Kara, satisfied with her handiwork, perches herself at the bottom corner of the bed parallel to Oliver’s legs. Barry is groaning beneath him, threatening to push Oliver off the bed which Oliver chooses to ignore in favour of propping himself up to kiss Kara who watches them in fond exasperation.

And then there’s a sharp poke in his side and he jerks away from Kara and away from his attacker and lands on the wooden floor with a thump. Oliver sits there half-stunned, Kara staring down at him with her eyebrows scrunched in a mix of hurt and confusion and then there’s Barry who has pushed himself up against the headboard smugly looking down at Oliver.

“Wha-what happened? Where’d my kiss go?” Kara asks, stifling a laugh at Oliver’s awkward position on the floor.

“I poked him,” Barry declares gleefully.

“And it hurt,” Oliver grounds out the lie. Turns out, Oliver has a third secret: He’s very, very ticklish.

“I barely touched you! Unless…” Barry’s voice trails off and his smile somehow grows. He shares a practically evil look with Kara who seems to catch on almost immediately and her own mischievous smirk makes an appearance.

Sometimes he swears these two can read each others minds and he’s pretty sure that’s not in either of the super power list,

“Ollie…are you ticklish?” Kara draws out playfully, knowing full well the answer considering the terrifying grin on her face.

Oliver shakes his head almost frantically but it’s no use and he doesn’t get the chance to get any words out when Kara pounces on him. Her fingers are wriggling against his sides and he can’t stop laughing as he tries to push her away.

Just as he thinks he’s succeeded, Barry joins them on the floor, finding that spot with ease and using it to bring Oliver to tears of laughter. Kara laughs excitedly at the discovery and attacks without mercy so Oliver is curling into himself, trying to squirm away from them, weakly protesting against this particular form of attack.

Somehow Oliver works up the courage to move his arms, leaving his sides unguarded but giving him a chance to attack them blindly. It takes a couple of tries but Kara is brought down first (just because she’s invulnerable doesn’t mean she doesn’t have nerves), collapsing into peals of laughter – caught between protecting herself and tickling Oliver. Barry’s harder to take down with his speed. It’s not as hard, Oliver finds out, if he temporarily teams up with Kara, letting her jump onto Barry and pin him down so Oliver can serve up the ultimate revenge tickle.

They’re an absolute giggling mess, sprawled across the bedroom floor, slightly disheveled and full of breathless mirth occasionally interrupted by a shriek. And they’re happy.

In this moment, nothing else matters: joy comes easily and laughter is effortless and Oliver and Barry and Kara finally get to enjoy a moment of pure bliss.

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Okay, finished the Flash season two as part of my rewatch of the whole series in preparation for season 5. Here’s my thoughts:

GOOD

1) Cisco’s superhero origin story is still one of my favorite arcs on this show

2) Zoom was a great Big Bad. Good backstory, good motivation, and he was just a great character to hate. His murder of Henry Allen still stands as one of my favorite moments on the show. 

3) Everything about Earth-2. Killer Frost, Reverb, Detective West...I just loved every single second of it. 

4) The Speed Force episode. Well freaking done, especially with having Nora Allen be the final manifestation of the Force.

5) Fully integrating Joe and Iris on the team. One of my big complaints of season one was that Iris was always on the sidelines. So having her on the team felt like an improvement.

6) Harry and Jesse Wells! One, best version of Harrison Wells so far. Two, Jesse is one of my favorite recurring characters on this show. She’s just fun to have around. 

7) The Linda Park episodes. She was okay to me last season but she became an instant fave this season. Her trying to pretend to be Doctor Light is still one of the funniest scenes this show has ever done. 

8) The Jay Garrick reveal in the season finale. You clever bastards. 

9) I already had faith in Grant Gustin’s ability to play Barry Allen but he truly proved his chops this season. Just, the opening of the season finale where he’s crying out in agony over his father’s death gave me chills. You know, I’m gonna go on record here saying that I think Grant is the best actor among the Arrowverse leads. 

OKAY

1) I really like Barry and Iris together but the writers were really slacking on progressing their relationship. 

2) Wally West. Don’t get me wrong, I love him in season 3 but here, he was stuck in “angsty teenager” mode. That would’ve been fine but it’s like that was the only way the writers knew how to write his character. 

3) The Reverse Flash episode was...eh. I get that it was supposed to introduce the concept of time remnants but I just found his return a bit weak. Although that might not be his fault entirely since this was also the episode Patty Spivot was leaving. I talk about her in the BAD section if you want to know my thoughts. 

4) Putting Caitlyn in a relationship with Zoom. She just lost her husband so it felt a little...distasteful. I know some time past since Ronnie’s death but I feel like there were better story angles for her character. Give her something else besides romance stories.  

5) Flashpoint. I don’t love or hate the arc but since it’s an important Flash storyline, I get why they would want to adapt it for the show. Still...I’m not a huge fan of Flashpoint. And the animated movie did it better. 

6) The Firestorm episode. I like Jefferson but the overall episode was average. Villain was weak and they downplayed the fact that Martin Stein was dying without a second half. 

BAD

1) Flash Back was fun but the time travel stuff was whack. What happened to Barry in the past? Present Barry meets his past self so by this show’s logic, there should be two Barrys in the present day. And how is history still the same? The only big difference is that Hartley’s now a good guy. This should’ve been a mini-Flashpoint since Barry meeting his past self and introducing the team to time travel early should’ve radically changed the timeline.

2) Zoom was great but there are plot holes to his character. So there were two Zooms because of time travel, that I understood. But if the first Zoom killed the Zoom that was in love with Caitlyn, then why did the first Zoom have the same feelings for her? The main Zoom shouldn’t have the same memories as the other Zooms since time remnants are clones. It’s not a hive mind. 

3) Patty Spivot was a waste of screen time. It’s not even a Westallen thing, her character just brought nothing to the show. By the time she left, I completely forgot about her. 

4) The Arrow crossover that was supposed to hype up Legends. It just sucked. I wanted to punch Hawkman and the plot didn’t interest me. I don’t even like Arrow and this was during their worst season too. 

5) Barry giving up his speed to Zoom made no sense to me. He was already faster than him and Joe and Harry had their guns on him. Just beat him up. 

6) Gorilla Grodd. I hated the Grodd episodes in season one and not much has changed in season two. It’s not that Grodd is a bad villain, it’s more that Grodd was a filler villain that kept disrupting the main story. Grodd should be the main villain of an entire season. It’s like the writers don’t know what to do with this character. 

Alright, onto season three. 

[justgotham]

Who doesn't want Batman in the Arrowverse?

DC fans are lucky enough to live in a time when all of their favorite characters are taking over television. The Flash, Green Arrow, Supergirl and more are fighting through space and time across the Arrowverse on The CW, and Bruce Wayne is learning to be Batman over on FOX's Gotham. Wouldn't it be great if those two worlds could collide somehow?

While that's clearly not a realistic option, considering Gotham airs on a rival network and the tone of the series is vastly different from the Arrowverse, it's still fun for us to wonder what could be.

Self-proclaimed nerd and Gotham star David Mazouz apparently feels the same way. During an interview with the young actor, we asked what he'd do if he was going to make a crossover happen between the two worlds, and he had a great idea for the big event, although it did come with one major stipulation.

"First of all, if there's going to be a Crossover, they come to Gotham," Mazouz said. "That's kind of a must have because nobody in Gotham can time travel yet."

As he continued, Mazouz laid out a wonderful plan that utilized the Flashpoint storyline as a way to explain the difference in the two stories.

"The Flash kind of had their run-in with Flashpoint a couple of seasons ago. Maybe there could be another kind of Flashpoint where Flash runs back in time and goes to Gotham and maybe tries to stop Bruce Wayne's parents' murder from happening. Maybe not the traditional 'Bruce Wayne gets murdered instead and Thomas becomes Batman thing,' but something along those lines where the whole world gets whack and it's up to Flash to fix things in Gotham."

This would undoubtedly be fun to watch but, as we all know, there's no way these shows ever actually get to visit one another.

[imhairforyou]

Superhero Pop Art | Nailing It

With today’s exciting release of Justice League and the big CW Arrowverse crossover coming up in just a couple of weeks, I felt that this would be the perfect time to share a tutorial on my superhero-inspired nail art.  These bold nails give off a pop art vibes with their dotted background and big speech bubbles.  Recreate this look by using a variety of colours and sound effect words of your choice.

Materials:

1) Base Coat

2) Top Coat

3) Variety of Bold Nail Polish Colours (I chose orange, blue, yellow, red, and black)

4) White Paint

5) Black Paint

6) Small Dotting Tool

7) Small Paint Brush

Procedure:

1) Start by painting your nails with a layer of base coat.

2) Paint each of your nails with a different nail polish colour.  To make them really pop, I chose to paint two coats of each colour.

3) Dip your dotting tool into the white paint.

4) Place uniform dots over your nail, re-dipping into the paint when needed.

5) Dip your paint brush into the white paint.

6) Create a diagonal zigzag across your nail.

7) Fill in the bottom half of your nail with white paint.

8) Clean off the paint brush and dip it into the black paint.

9) Write an action word of your choice within the white area on your nail.  The different words I chose were “POW”, “BOOM”, “CRASH”, “BAM”, “WHACK”.

10) Once everything is dry, finish off with a layer of top coat.

[themeleelobby]

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[breeleroux]

It was a start so you can have this whack ass arrowverse that yall cherish so much. Without Bart Allen and Smallville being so successful yall shit wouldn't exist.

I think it’s very important that we all acknowledge that Bart Allen appeared in Smallville AND HE LOOKED LIKE THIS

LIKE WHO LET THIS HAPPEN??