#coldwestallen

[leonard-cold]

[asexual-fandom-queen]

I think I’ve realized my favourite OT3 dynamic is “my babygirl boyfriend went and caught feelings for that sadboi, so I guess now he’s OUR crush”

[qlala]

wish i could draw so i could draw barry, len, and iris as the “three tickets for challengers, please” meme

[coldflasher]

stole this from a post about interview with the vampire's daniel molloy (a king) but this is soooo coldwestallen coded

you know len gets the biggest kick out of involving himself in westallen's arguments, especially when he's the cause of them (which is often the case). he's sat there stirring the pot, making sly little digs to get them both more and more heated and loving every minute of it

barry's like "you're not helping" and len's like "oh i think i am" 😏 and barry gives him that exasperated look that's 90% of the reason westallen are fighting because without fail barry responds to len's bullshit by rolling his eyes and not actually doing anything about

iris is like. this close to calling joe and asking to borrow his gun knowing he would 100% give it to her if len was the one she planned on pointing it at...

[coldinpantsreboot]

I'm not a fan of ColdWestAllen, but I'm thinking about them on Earth-2 and damn, it's hot. Mayor Leonard Snart can be verbally humiliating, and Detective Iris West threatens physical violence when some asshole thinks he can hurt their sunshine Barry Allen. And, yes, Iris and Barry are officially married and Leonard is just a "family friend" but the real close people know they're together.

[tiffanybluesclues]

Continuing the adventures through my unwritten fic notes, I'm wishing so hard that I had written this one. It looks like WestAllen fic but I know I planned it as part of a ColdWestAllen week, so that swerve I mention toward the beginning probably meant I was planning a heel-face turn for Len or something.

[calciumcryptid]

None of you know pain until you find a ship that you adore so much but it is only able to exist in one continuity and everything else you are building and adapting with your own bare hands because one of the characters is typically OLD AS FUCK.

[sproutwings]

20 Questions for Fic Writers!

The lovely @crestfallercanyon tagged me for this weeks ago, and I haven't been ignoring it - I just didn't get around to it sooner. Sorry!

How many works do you have on AO3? 380 (382, technically, because two are still anon/unrevealed exchange works.)

What’s your total A03 word count? 1,123,214

What fandoms do you write for? Currently, mostly DCU, The Flash and a bunch of tiny fandoms, but I've been writing fanfic for ages, so I went through quite a few fandoms.

What are your top five fics by kudos?

a) cut me open, take my heart (DCU, JayTim, 1744 kudos) b) A Bird in the Hand (DCU, Dickstroke, 1694 kudos) c) Hook(er), Line and Sinker (The Flash, Coldflash, 1586 kudos) d) No Shortage of Blood (Original Works, Starving Vampire/Vampire Hunter Having A Moral Crisis, 1453 kudos) e) Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Man (Gossip Girl, Dan/Blair/Chuck, 1149 kudos)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? I always try to, but sometimes it takes a while to get around to it. /o\

What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I have no idea. I used to write a lot of angsty stuff back when I was younger but the older I get the more I gravitate towards fics that leave the characters in a... well, maybe not necessarily in a good place exactly, because I tend to ship a lot of dysfunctional ships and write unhealthy relationship dynamics, but I don't want the characters to feel hopeless and unhappy in the end, so even when they're in a bad situation, they're making the best out of it.

A very old, very angsty fic of mine is Too Close To Touch (Harry Potter, various permutations of Draco, Harry and Hermione). I don't know if it's the angstiest overall, but it occasionally still gets comments so it's fresh in my mind despite having been written almost two decades ago.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oh no, this is similarly hard to answer. Maybe Throw Away the Plan (The Flash, Coldwestallen)? Most of my endings seem to be "the main conflict of the story is dealt with, the ship kisses and things are okay-ish for now". 🙃

Do you get hate on your fic? Maybe once or twice, but nothing dramatic or memorable, luckily enough.

Do you write smut? Sometimes.

Do you write crossovers? No.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Yes! Someone copied a few of my fics word by word, replaced the names and posted them as Kpop RPS. D: D: D: I got the author to take them down, but they did it with a lot of people's fics and eventually AO3 banned them.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Yes, a few! I blanket allow translations, as long as they're credited properly and not posted anywhere but AO3.

Have you ever co-written a fic? Yes, but it was a really long time ago, and coordinating was pretty stressful. I prefer to work on my own schedule.

What‘s your all-time favourite ship? Noooo, don't make me choose. I love so many ships! If I absolutely had to pick one, it would be Tommy/Bubonic from Eye Candy, but it mostly depends on what I'm in the mood for right in that moment.

What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? There's Coldflash BDSM fic based on a long-forgotten Tumblr prompt I would have loved to write one day, but it would be far longer than anything I'm comfortable writing and it's only 'in progress' in so far that I have a few dialogue snippets from it written down yet.

What’s your writing strengths? Character voices and snappy banter, probably.

What’s your writing weaknesses? Plot!!!! As you can see by every fic I've written where the characters get captured or attacked by some nameless villain for nebulous reasons. I always handwave stuff like that because I simply can't bring myself to care about it or put any thought into it. 😅 Sorry!

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? As a reader, It always throws me out of the story. :(

First fandom you wrote for? The X-Files! Mulder/Krycek was teenage Sandrine's first fanfic obsession. (Though technically, I wrote terrible Star Wars and The Three Musketeers fic long before I knew what fanfic was! But I've decided that doesn't count. 😅)

Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

(never been) so much at stake (OW, Vampire Moonlighting As A Barista/Exhausted Vampire Hunter In Search Of Caffeine) is probably the best, but The Biggest Score of All (The Flash, Coldflash) has my heart!

I'm supposed to tag people here, and I'm terrible at this, so @waysheswings, @sunherirai, @moriavis, @zeroducks-2, @hithelleth, @elasticella - if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged and if you want to ignore it, pretend I never mentioned your name. And anyone else who sees this and wants to answer, you're also tagged! Yes, I mean YOU. :D

[leonard-cold]

I’ve been wanting to engage the coldflash fandom more and I’ve got some qs for you! — what’s your favorite:

Coldflash episode?

Barry Allen Episode (could be from outside the flash too!)

Leonard Snart focused episode? (LoT or the Flash)

And also…

What’s your favorite fanfic? (Or list a couple)

What gifset do you always reblog?

No pressure on asking but I hope that these are fun questions ❄️⚡️

hey anon

my favorite coldflash episode is probably infantino street. it felt like the writers showing us a glimpse of what could've been in an almost painful way but i just love watching them work together and it was a beautiful farewell to a beloved character that acknowledged how important these two were for each other. we could've had it all... but at least we'll always have infantino street

my favorite barry episode is a tie between 'the runaway dinosaur' and 'the last temptation of barry allen' (tho i haven't watched the show beyond s6 yet so always subject to change)

my favorite len episode... hm. for the flash it's probably 'going rogue' bc i love when he gets to be an asshole and gets away w it 😂 i mean, i know it's controversial but i also love 'doomworld' bc its so fun to see wentworth give us his best disney villain acting 😆 i actually hate most of s1 of legends (big l for me that this is the only season my fave character is in and i can barely stand to watch it...) so if i had to pick one it'd probably be 'white knights' just bc it's low stakes fun watching len be his little con-artist self

there are so many great coldflash fics out there honestly, i remember saying i was gonna make a rec list bc i specifically wanted to rec more recent fics... but then i didn't 😅 so anyway, my fave fic is 'tell me what you want me to say' by giraffeter (here), i actually had to stop myself from reading it over and over again bc i was worried i was going to make myself sick of it which would be an absolute tragedy bc that fic is so amazing and addictive, i could gush it all day like a schoolkid with a crush 😍

bonus point for any fic crestfaller has ever written for the ship, i cannot pick one, her work always makes me go stare at the ceiling for a little while it is *that* good (edit bc i forgot to link them but you can find her coldflash fics here)

(and i know this was abt coldflash but my fave coldwestallen fic is 'that old switcheroo' by sandrine, which you can find here)

idk if there's a gifset that i always reblog in the way you mean bc i rarely reblog anything spontaneously haha, i schedule two posts a day and i pick them by looking through my bookmarks

these questions were definitely fun, not sure my answers were all that interesting lmao, but in any case thank u for your interest 😊

[asexual-fandom-queen]

Noticing a pattern in all my favourite OT3s. Character A, who has big puppy dog energy and ridiculous chemistry with B and C, and B and C who ostensibly are like “ew, what does Character A even see in B/C” but then when they actually have the chance to interact are like “oh we can be Asshole Black Cats (affectionate) together”, and Character A is like “oh god there’s two of them, I know I wanted you to get along, but get along less”

[qlala]

Society if "Infantino Street" had been Barry's plan C for saving Iris instead of plan Z, so we'd gotten that episode halfway through the season instead of right at the end...

Barry could actually do the smart thing and not drop Len back in Siberia until after they're sure the plan will work (the cold gun is a useful backup), and when it doesn't work, Len is like "pathetic effort everyone, great job, how about you let the grown-ups do the planning now" and sticks around as a regular for the rest of the season.

And as plan after plan fails, and Iris starts that grim descent toward accepting her death is inevitable, she also starts making her own, private back-up plan. Because she doesn't have it in her to just not care about what's going to happen to her family and friends when she dies, and "Barry going insane with grief and killing people" is a particularly hard possibility to ignore.

So after Barry tells her that Len stopped him from killing King Shark, Iris's plan starts to take shape. She spends the back half of the season critically evaluating Len as a potential rebound for Barry, and then, once she's satisfied, starts pushing them together at every opportunity. She needs to make sure that Len's not going to split the second she dies, and that Barry understands she's giving him permission to move on, for everyone's sake.

Except we've seen Iris's idea of subtle, and so Len and Barry spend the second half of the season baffled instead.

Len is pretty sure Iris is going for some deeply misguided, last-hurrah bit of infidelity with the way she keeps trying to catch him alone and ask him veiled questions about his sex life, and Barry thinks Iris is losing her faith in him because of the failed plans and is, he doesn't know what, testing him? with the way she keeps asking him things like how Leonard's new jacket looked good, didn't he think? and shouldn't someone let Lisa know he was back, maybe she could make him stick around? after all, the speed force hadn't tried to correct the timeline and he'd been there a while, so maybe...?

What Iris doesn't count on is that Barry was right: he and Len are a lot alike. And as months pass and she spends all that time looking for the good that Barry always claims to have seen in Len, and finding it, it becomes a lot harder to remember that Barry is the one who's supposed to be falling for Len, not her.

And even Len's willpower has a breaking point, which they all find out when Len finally interrupts another one of Iris's—alright, flirtatious—questions with a hard, exasperated look over her head at Barry, and he drawls that this is a bad idea wrapped in a worse one and then kisses Iris anyway.

And that wasn't what Iris had been going for, admittedly, but if she's what's been missing in getting Barry and Len together, then she's not going to feel guilty about enjoying it for as long as she has the time left. So she holds a hand out to Barry from across the room, and slides the other one over the back of Len's neck and kisses him back.

Except. Except then one of the plans does work, and suddenly, Iris isn't going to die anymore. And she just spent the last several months doing everything in her power to tangle Len up with Barry, and somehow she got caught up in the net, too.

So she has no idea what they're supposed to do when the morning after she was supposed to die dawns, and she's still alive, and she's still in love with both the men in her bed, arguing about which one of them should get up and go make the coffee. She gives it about two minutes from the next time they show up at STAR Labs, with the hickeys on Len's throat and the bruise on Barry's lips, for everyone else to realize what's been going on. And then she's going to have to answer some very uncomfortable questions from Joe about how exactly this happened...

And on top of all of that, she's going to need to start looking for a very open-minded wedding planner.

[kitkatt0430]

Iris West-Allen for the character ask game 👀

How I feel about this character

I think she's awesome. We really get to watch her grow over the course of the series and watching her truly discover herself as a leader and hero in her own right is really wonderful to see. While she occasionally has powers here and there, she's a great example of a badass normal and proves that a powered character (Barry) doesn't need a powered love interest in order to be in love with someone who is every bit their equal. Iris is no damsel in distress; she's going to try to find a way to save herself every time.

That said, I wish her agency was more consistently her own. Her plots often get co-opted to serve other character's plots (most often Barry, but it's also been done for Allegra which was just weird...) which puts a lot of her achievements in the background or sub-plot area instead of centering them the way she deserves.

(The fact that she goes from student to journalist with no graduation in between is really frustrating. She's Barry's best friend and yet he's never shown as being super excited to attend her graduation and celebrate her achievement of a Masters degree??? S1, asleep at the wheel right there...)

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Barry, Eddie, Cisco, Caitlin, Lisa, Leonard (more for ColdWestAllen than for ColdWest on it's own though), Ralph (but again more for ElongatedWestAllen than DibnyWest itself), Linda, Laurel, Sara...

Probably more tbh, she's very shippable

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Barry again, I kind of prefer the platonic ship for them because of how their dynamic in S1/S2 is (though obviously the romantic ship grew on me...)

Cisco, Caitlin, Frost, Allegra, Kamilla, Linda, Ralph...

Everyone wants to be besties with her, okay? :D

My unpopular opinion about this character

The show does a terrible job of establishing Iris' feelings for Barry as romantic in the first several seasons.

In season one especially there is so much of other characters telling her how they think she feels, but every time she establishes what her feelings are for him are... those feelings are platonic. Aside from the cheating kiss that was the worst decision ever made by the show runners (and made kinda creepy given how it's been romanticized by later seasons) and was a heat of the moment thing that happened after yet another character (Linda) was telling Iris 'I think you're in love with him based on your stated as platonic, sibling-like behavior with him'.

Basically every 'shippy' moment I've seen pointed out for the first two seasons fits entirely with Iris' stated platonic feelings and can really only be interpreted as romantic interest if her stated feelings are ignored. (Especially Joe trying to get Iris to say she wouldn't have dated Eddie if she knew Barry liked her; way to take what she was just saying out of context despite the context having literally just been established. >_<) Iris is the one living in her own head, I wish other characters would respect that she knows what her emotions are better than they do.

This essentially leads to the problem where when Iris and Barry get together it feels less like it's happening because Iris is in love with Barry and more because everyone and their time-line reading AI has told her she marries Barry. And since trying to deviate from that got Eddie killed, what choice does she really have? She loves Barry, but is she in love with him? It's painfully unclear for quite some time and the show itself doesn't even acknowledge this problem until (briefly) in S9.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I wish she'd been looped in on Barry being the Flash from the start. Locking her out of the loop 'for her protection' only ever put her in more danger than she'd have been in if she'd been kept aware of what was actually going on.

[angst-is-love-angst-is-life]

Ship game: Barry Allen

Let's seeee

Barry/Iris (Westallen)

Barry/Len (Coldflash)

Barry/Cisco (Barrisco) more BROTP tho

Barry/Iris/Eddie (Westhallen) what can I say-- it's been growing on me

Barry/Iris/Len (Coldwestallen) best of both worlds

Barry/Oliver (Olivarry) less now but will indulge occasionally

Thank you for sending my fave :)

[tiffanybluesclues]

Started re-reading coldwestallen fic in the year 2024, who am I?