#candice patton defense squad

[zayray030]

Reblog if you Love Iris West

[xswestallen]

With our culture, it’s honestly not surprising people hate Candice for posting selfies or feeling beautiful. We live in a society that thrives on making women, especially WOC, feel insecure. Turn on your TV and half the commercials are telling us we need 17 products to make our faces look “naturally beautiful”. Look in a magazine and you’ll see nothing but weight loss tips, advice on appealing to straight men, and recommendations for another 20 products you need to make you attractive. Go on any Instagram with over 1K followers and you’ll see ads for ‘skinny’ teas that will literally make you shit your guts out in pursuit of a flat tummy.

For Candice to put herself out there the way she does, it’s no wonder people are afraid. She’s woken up to the vicious cycle of shame that is our media. She loves her herself, her body, and her mind, and she’s not ashamed to say that. A black woman having the audacity to be confident like that scares people. It’s a revolutionary act of rebellion against thousands of years of oppression. 

Women are taught, feel bad about yourself for not being pretty enough, dwell on insecurity, think of how to better appeal to men, be meek, be quiet, be small, be humble to the point of being taken advantage of. No more. We can be confident. We will love ourselves unapologetically. 

[hoytjessicatara]

Why the hell is Discount Mr. Fantastic getting so much more screentime over actual fan faves like Iris, Cisco, Harry and Joe!?

[stydias-westallen]

You know there some people who say WA fans are racist because they shipped candice from the jump because she was black?

Okay now this one fucking baffles me. Iris is Barry’s canonical love interest from the comics like who else were we supposed to ship him with when we knew nothing else about the show?

So if another Romeo&Juliet movie comes out are people gonna give non-lead actress #3 in the background a chance? Or are you going to automatically assume if Juliet’s been cast then that’s his endgame relationship?

They didn’t have a problem with Iris being Barry’s endgame they had a problem with Candice playing Iris from the jump. LMFAO people are so transparent I can’t deal.

[zayray030]

This woman goes through so much shit, both in and out of the show, and she deserves all the love in the world and deserves to get everything she ever needs or wants.

Candice is a trailblazer; she has paved and continues to pave the way for so many black actresses to be cast as leads in genre fiction. Her courage and her grace are extremely admirable, but she should not have had to be strong, while being completely isolated for years. She was on a network that remained silent when she was being racially abused online; she had producers who simply told her to stay offline once she was cast, instead of actively supporting her online. She had no idea her employer provided a department for dealing with death threats, because they never informed her of the fact, until she went to them and said that she was receiving death threats. On set, she received little to no public support from her co-stars for years, despite the fact that every one of them on social media were completely aware of the racist vitriol directed at her. They all stayed silent. They all were complicit. Meanwhile, Candice wasn’t even allowed to wear her natural hair onscreen until season 6, and she had producers who dared label her a diva simply for asking for black make-up artists and hair stylists. During the first season of the show, she would have to go back to her trailer to touch up her make-up just minutes before she had to film, because she had MUAs who did not know how to apply make-up on a black woman. Her only regular female co-star on the show for four years spent most of her time emboldening her racist fandom against Candice and Iris.

Onscreen, Iris has been shortchanged frequently where white leading ladies would not be. There is a constant perpetuation of misogynoir in the narrative time and again. Iris was denied her own wedding; she was denied her fully-fledged journalistic arc for years; even as she hires her own Team, the women whom she hires cannot solely be tied to the Citizen and Iris’s story and absolutely have to be integrated into Team Flash, because Iris isn’t allowed her own Team of journalists. She constantly is self-sacrificing, while the narrative devalues her very livelihood; she is constantly expected to be strong and be there for others, but is denied comfort. 

And yet Candice is still here, delivering amazing performance after amazing performance, while the CW and the show capitalize on her popularity. Candice is such a role model, but she never should have gone through what she did. Every single person who has been complicit in how badly she has been treated on this show and network should be absolutely ashamed in perpetuating this racist treatment. They now want to put out hollow statements about how they stand with their black colleagues, when they’ve constantly mistreated black actors and actresses and perpetuated anti-black racism against them. 

[breeleroux]

Listening to Javicia, Azie, Anna, and Candice speak about what they go through, people should be ashamed of themselves! I say it all the time but y'all really put black women through it over some fictional characters.

[buckley911]

I did a thing and I am quite fond of the idea of it. 

© for original gifs.

[candicanesunited]

Ways To Watch The Flash Tonight 

We want to make as much noise as possible on SM tonight while we watch #RunIrisRun, since that’s one of the only way our viewership is reflected unless we are Nielsen viewers. 

The best way to watch live is to turn your TV on when the show airs and start tweeting like the wind as you watch, but we know that’s not possible for those of you outside the US or in earlier time zones. So without further ado, here are some links that should play The Flash at 8pm eastern / 7pm central / 5pm pacific. Please check here to see the time the episode starts for you:

Live streams:  streamfare ufreetv olweb (may work directly here) ustvnow 

If you live in the United States, then please rewatch the episode as soon as it becomes available on the CW website or app. It usually appears three hours after the east coast airing. The CW does count these views even if they’re not included in Nielsen ratings. 

Also, if you have access to The Flash on iTunes then please consider purchasing the episode once it’s available. We’d like to show how much we support #RunIrisRun through every available avenue.

And don’t forget to tweet as much as possible before, during and after #TheFlash using both hashtags and including the writers! (Also post your #SelfiesForCandice with your favorite Iris/Flash/purple-themed shirts or gear.)

[missspecter]

I’m deadass getting emo seeing Candice in all the crossover BTS pics

And not to mention that the WestAllen wedding is the crossover’s main event, all those heroes came and are gathered for Iris Ann West’s wedding

We’ve come such a long way I’m-

[xswestallen]

A lil shady for Candice to like a tweet about rating going up last Tuesday 👀

Normally, I would just ignore a stupid messages like this, that’s clearly sent with the intention of causing drama, but, I’m so annoyed with the state of the fandom that I want to say this.

CANDICE PATTON IS NOT A SHADY, RUDE, CATTY, OR PETTY PERSON!!! She’s a kind, loving, positive person. She also has better things to do than like shady tweets. 

I hate this widely accepted delusion that Candice goes on social media just to be rude or snarky to people she dislikes. Using a completely normal instance like this, where Candice likes some positive press attention her show is getting, as an example: it’s a discredit to Candice’s constitution to think she liked that to send a message. From everything we know about Candice, all the times we’ve heard her speak about how she deals with hate, she is eloquent and mature. The way she’s always carried herself is a stark contrast from the kind of person who would be so petty to do what’s being suggested. 

I don’t know who you are, anon. I don’t know if you sent this because you hate Candice and want me to join you, or if you sent this because you think being shady is cool and you hope Candice had mean spirited intentions. Either way, I think it shows your own lack of maturity in general and disregard for Candice as a person. 

This constant speculation from those who hate Candice, about how she’s trying to discreetly throw shade, is bad for her. If you care about her, you shouldn’t help perpetuate rumors like this, because they play right into the racist, ‘angry black woman’ stereotype and all the other disgusting things those who hate Candice say about her.

[keeloves]

The exact moment I stopped liking Cecile and started to full out hate her!

Caitlin & Cecile’s reaction exchange to Nora’s sassy remark is hilarious! 

[hoytjessicatara]

Oliver and Felicity who are rich as hell gave a fucking coffee maker to Westallen after ruining their wedding

[judyjetsonhookah]

Soooo a troll on twitter posted a bunch of info for DCTVU actors including Candice’s California address.

Go report cxitlinfrost y'all.

. They're out here compromising the safety of ppl bc they got blocked on Insta.

[keeloves]

I don’t know what to think!

[iloveyoulikexo]

Iris West Defense Squad: Mobilize!!

So I just learned that for Justice League they cast Kiersey Clemons as Iris West and now reports are that they've cut all her scenes from the movie.

who to message:  @justiceleaguewb ‏ @dccomics @zacksnyder @joss

[momentofmemory]

the post about MJ is great, but i don't think Iris West belonged there. there's a strong argument to be made that she's a terrible *character*, regardless whether she's canonical or not. it's not about being Black, it's about the character being consistently annoying. the better issue to take with her is WHY they write Black women to be awful. in fact, candice patton deserves an oscar for what she's done with the terrible awful writing she's been given. she's amazing. Iris is the WORST.

Hi nonnie, thanks for stopping by. :)

Whether or not Iris is a poorly written character is a matter of debate—I certainly don’t think so, or at least no more than anyone else on a CW show—but for the purposes of the conversation, I’m more interested in the fandom’s response to her.

It’s a well recognized trend that fandom disproportionately hates on female characters, usually for the very same traits that get praised in male characters, but it’s overwhelmingly worse for Black women. You can’t hardly step two feet into the Flash fandom without hearing someone ragging on her, and it’s just not proportional to Iris’s faults. Darcy Lewis from Thor can be seen as annoying; she became the fandom’s favourite Little Black Dress. Felicity Smoak from  Arrow can be seen as clingy and controlling; fans adored her so much she elevated from a side character to the canon OTP. I’ve never, ever seen a Black woman receive this kind of treatment in any fandom—in fact, it usually goes in the opposite direction, like Angel Coulby’s decreased screen time in Merlin.

Her coworkers were just as bad. When Chris Pratt got called out for his actual  sketchy ties (in a meme of all things), his co-stars immediately rushed to defend him. When Candice Patton experienced death threats, hate brigades, calls for her character to be killed off, and was treated as genuinely less than? Grant Gustin didn’t do anything to defend her until as late as 2019 when fans actually called him out on it.

When a white male character is written “poorly,” fandom has no issue promptly fixing it and decrying the writers—think defense squads for Loki from Marvel, or Peter Hale from Teen Wolf—but when a Black women is “poorly” written, the hate is always directed towards the character herself. There aren’t thousands of fix-it fics. Meta writers don’t flock to justify her. She’s just seen as a problem, and usually the solution is to bully or kill her off.

I think it’s fair and valid to dislike a character, but when it becomes a pattern, and one filled with unjustifiable hatred, it’s worthy of considering where that dislike came from. If a petty action they took had been done by my favourite character instead, would I have excused it? Do I like irreverent humor better when it comes from a guy? And, if I genuinely dislike a character, how do I go about dealing with it?

Fandom is transformative. Fandom is power. If all Hollywood ever hears about is how much I hate women/bipoc, then all I accomplish is even fewer women/bipoc onscreen.