#coldwestallen

[leonard-cold]

[asexual-fandom-queen]

a top tier ot3 is just 3 people with more Big Switch Energy than you even knew was possible

[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

[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.

[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]

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]

hello miss Q! I saw that cute pokemon drawing that you reblogged on your main blog and I didn't know you liked pokemon! I wouldn't presume to ask for an AU (🥺) but hypothetically... what pokemon would you give team flash and the rogues? or, at least, Barry and Len? (and Iris...? I haven't forgotten that you promised us a coldwestallen fic 🥺😫🙏)

oh friend you know i can't resist a coldwestallen ask... i tried to cut this down but it's STILL way too long and became an AU anyway, so i'll put my answers under a cut :)

barry:

i made myself unreasonably sad right off the bat with this one, but originally, i'd say he has an eevee—an anniversary present that his dad gave to his mom just before she died. afterwards, barry didn’t want her. he was traumatized, the eevee just reminded him of his parents, and frankly, he wished that she had died instead of his mom. but joe coaxed him into keeping her, with a big planned talk about ~responsibility that barry interrupted after thirty seconds by asking if joe would leave him alone if he just said he would keep the thing

the resentment eased up a bit as barry got older and realized he was unfairly putting his survivor's guilt on her, but he still kind of kept her at arm's length (just one more thing to lose, otherwise) and they never got close enough for eevee to evolve into one of the friendship-based forms

but he kept her around (some of joe's talk stuck, after all), and so she was dozing in the hood of his jacket the night that he got struck by lighting after the particle accelerator explosion. when he opened his eyes again, one months-long coma later, it was to find a jolteon sleeping on his chest in the hospital bed, growling without opening her eyes whenever anyone tried to get near him

and barry finally gets it, the way he didn't when he was a kid--they survived something together, and it changed both of them, but the change doesn't have to be a bad thing, and they can (and do) learn how to navigate it together

(and yes, cisco DOES make the jolteon her own little flash mask, once they realize she can keep up with barry. it's a common enough pokemon that it’s not a huge problem, the flash having a jolteon too, but the story about barry’s eevee evolving in a lightning strike made the news, so better to be safe than sorry) (the lightning strike wasn't even the newsworthy part—barry's jolteon bit three cops, two paramedics, and a firefighter before joe finally pulled on a pair of barry's rubber lab gloves and grabbed hold of her long enough for them to put barry in an ambulance)

iris:

joe knows damn well that giving a kid a pokemon is a recipe for them getting in 100x more trouble than they could possibly get into alone, and he resolutely told iris her whole life that she could pick between getting a pokemon or a car for her 16th birthday... right up until they start fostering barry

because iris is an amazing kid, but there's limits to the amount of jealousy any 11 year old can handle. and iris suddenly having to share joe with barry and watch barry be an ungrateful punk about a pokemon he doesn't even want? is probably one of those limits. so, because it's joe's own fault that barry kept the eevee, he tries to preempt any issues by taking iris to pick out one of her own

iris loves her eevee from the second she sees her. she picks the one that walks right up to her, as bold as anything, and joe's only consolation for being 100% right about iris getting in more trouble in the immediate future is that maybe seeing iris with her eevee will help barry work through whatever's making him so upset about his

it backfires; iris's eevee evolves into an espeon within a year, the two of them inseparable, and it makes the situation with barry's eevee all the more awkward as the years go on—when people find out they got their eevees at the same time, they expect to see barry with a matching espeon or umbreon, and the unevolved eevee always seems like an unspoken rebuke (though from which one of them, no one is ever really sure)

but a very protective, very psychic fox turns out to be the perfect companion for an investigative journalist with a habit of chasing down dangerous leads. and after spending so much time around barry, iris's espeon knows him almost as well as she knows iris, so iris doesn't need a panic button once barry becomes the flash—if iris is ever in danger, her espeon will make damn sure barry knows it, even if they're clear across the city from each other

leonard:

i was going back and forth between like four different ice types before i realized i was approaching leonard's pokemon all wrong. leonard is not a pet person—he wouldn't get himself another mouth to feed just for the aesthetic. lisa and the endless parade of rescues she kept sneaking into their house growing up were plenty, thanks but no thanks

leonard would only get a pokemon as a tool, and even then only if he really needed one; like, for example, if his new super-powered nemesis had a very angry electric dog that kept frying the engines of leonard's getaway cars before he could use them to get away. ice types aren't actually very helpful against electric type pokemon—if he wanted something that would cancel out a jolteon's powers like the cold gun does to barry's, he would need a ground type.

and there is one particular ground type that would be perfectly suited to all of leonard's needs, of course. something immune to electricity, small enough to carry into a bank unnoticed in a duffel bag—and related to one of the only animals we know leonard does finds interesting, sharks. which means leonard is absolutely rolling up to his third time going head-to-head with barry, drawling, "think fast, flash" and then underhand-throwing a gible directly into his jolteon's legs like a bowling ball

in this universe, leonard wouldn't even need to torture and blackmail barry's friends to find out he's the flash. his gible just sticks his head out of his bag one day in jitters while leonard is waiting to pick up his drink, and the jolteon leaning against the legs of the kid in front of him gets one look at the gible, yelps, and bolts straight out of line and then out the front doors too, for good measure, before the kid can even turn around.

and when the kid does turn around... leonard recognizes the shape of that mouth, and the pale green of those bewildered eyes, but it's all academic at this point, because now that he's looking for it? leonard's only surprised that he didn't recognize him from silhouette alone

leonard is smirking before he can stop himself, and the kid—the flash—looks about as ready to bolt as his jolteon just did. but then the pretty barista, the one with the espeon, who always lets her fingertips brush leonard's as she hands him back his change, sets a medium flash, extra hot, on the counter and says, "here you go, barry," and leonard finds out that barry doesn't need his suit to live up to the nickname 'scarlet speedster'

(later—two years, seven near-death experiences, and one bonus threat of an actual-death experience from detective joe west later—leonard is still pulling jolteon quills out of the gible on a weekly basis. but now, it's only because iris and barry keep letting the pokemon on the couch whenever leonard isn't home to remind them that they had all expressly agreed not to do exactly that, because the jolteon and espeon shed, no matter what barry and iris say

and the gible is still a gible; leonard says they shouldn't let him evolve because he'll eat "the cats" (his collective name for iris's espeon and barry's jolteon), but really, it's just because he likes the gible the way he is. he says, once, that the gible reminds him of lisa when she was a toddler. cisco gets offended on her behalf, but lisa goes misty eyed—lisa snart, actually misty eyed—watching the gible bite one of barry's favorite sneakers in half, and says it's one of the nicest things leonard has ever said about her.)

[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 :)

[achangeinpriorities]

I’ve been tagged by frequent partner in headcanons @sophiainspace for the Last Huzzah To This Hyperfixation fic meme, which is appropriate as I am also likely giving a last huzzah to the Arrowverse! (Incredibly reluctantly, kicking and screaming against my brain all the way, but what can you do)

My first fic for this fandom was Your Move, on 30 November 2019, an incredibly creepy prelude-to-Eowells/Hartley that set the stage for many of my later works

My favorite fic I’ve written is…oh so many choices. The one I go back and reread most often is If You Wanna Fight (We Can Go All Night), which is playful smutty Coldwave—with an honorable mention to With Benefits, in which aro Len and ace Mick end up doing affection at cross purposes

My fluffiest fic is probably Day In, which is a Flashpiper domestic fluff interlude in the middle of a fairly angsty series—I can throw in rest-point fluff sometimes!

My funniest fic is, hands down, Floordrobe Malfunction, which is exactly what it sounds like: Lisa/Cisco/Hartley get caught in the middle of V-polyam shenanigans and end up switching clothes

My saddest fic is Worse When It’s Late, one of only two fics I went into the knowing they couldn’t have a happy ending. (The other is At All Costs, which is just about as bad)

A fic I almost didn’t post was Worse When It’s Late, just because it was so much darker than my usual fare. I’m proud of how it turned out but I was terrified of how people might react to it

The fic I most enjoyed writing is probably still Tam Len, because I loved the worldbuilding and the characters ended up taking on a life of their own, to the point that several plotty things just…resolved themselves in the end, entirely driven by the characters!

My favorite ship is…oh boy. I have loved so many ships in my time in this fandom. Coldwave maybe? What’s not to love about Coldwave—they’re queerplatonic partners in crime who would rather die than admit a Feeling. I adore them

My favorite femslash ship is probably something with Nora West-Allen? Nora/Spencer maybe…or Nora/Spencer/Joss—all of whom I wish I’d written more of (and had more plans for, before the muse forsook me!)

My favorite OT3 is Coldwestallen, because no matter which way you slice it somebody is getting ganged up on by two people who are too similar for anyone’s good, and the resulting dynamics are impeccable

My favorite non-romantic pairing is…well. If I wanted to rules-lawyer this, I’d say Coldwave, because the aro Len headcanon remains strong. However in the spirit of the question I’m gonna say Barry and his dads, both as they interact with each other and as they interact with Barry’s partners about him. There were a lot of meaty, messy dynamics there that I wish I had explored more (and that I had plans to, before the muse evaporated)

My favorite character to write is Leonard Snart, by a long shot. I vibe with his strange strange brain. He taught me so much in my time writing him. I still want to study him under a microscope. I’m going to hold onto him for a long time even if the hyperfixation is fading

My favorite neurodiversity fic (I love that this is a category, Soph) is Pride In The Little Things, with post-diagnosis feels. It’s rueful, because I think there’s often an element of that following a diagnosis, but it’s hopeful too

The fic I most clearly remember writing is Complication, a Coldflash-to-Coldwestallen fic that was meant to have more to it and got cut down for the sake of making a deadline. I’m pleased with how it turned out, but there’s another universe where it was a much messier slow burn

My favorite written-out-of-spite fic is Unplanned, in which I took out my frustrations with the ‘Mick’s head pregnancy’ plotline of Legends s6 (feat. supportive Gideon who understands what dysphoria is)

My most read fic is No Hero (No Less Loved), one of my older Coldflash fics—one I’m not overly attached to, in truth, but benefitted from being a popular pairing and having a lot of chapters to add to the hit count

My least read fic is Pride In The Little Things, my newest fic with a very rare pair indeed (Lita/Jerrie Rathaway, my and @blueelvewithwings lil ship). I didn’t expect it to get many hits at all, so seeing it with even this much interaction is surprising

The WIP I most regret not finishing is an unpublished sequel to Complication that would have built off the ideas I cut from the original fic, including appearances by Joe and Henry, and also explained why Len was so weird all throughout Complication. I hope to force myself through finishing it eventually!

My favorite gen fic is Found, a Rogues-as-family fic that was meant to set the stage for more in-depth stories that never happened. It still stands on its own pretty well though

My crackiest fic is Critical Fail, a ‘Team Flash plays D&D’ fic written at the behest of an IRL friend (who, to my knowledge, never ended up reading it—ah well, it was still fun!)

And a bonus holiday fic is By Candlelight, with Coldwestallen celebrating both a contemplative Hanukkah and a rowdy West family Christmas

I believe my co-conspirator @blueelvewithwings has already been tagged, but I’m also going to tag @a-redharlequin who has been my instigator, cheerleader, and also partner, who I wouldn’t have found without this fandom. I love y’all and I’m so happy to have spent three years plotting together!