#i have complecated emotions towards CW flash but Hartleys deption was unforgivible!

[omensofatimelord]

ALSO while Im thinking about Hartley Rathaway, I wanted to make the point that he’s a excellent example of an actually well done, nuanced queer disabled (ex)-villain/antihero. Like queer villain and disabled villains tend to be absolutely awful, primarily because it very very easy to associate their villainy with their queerness or disability, especially when contrasted with an able straight-cis protag. But with Hartley it manages to influence his villianry and motives, without inherently making him the villain. His powers primarily stem from his disability, and his queerness informs his disconnect to mainstream-society and informs his politics which make them both an important aspect of how he interacts with and sees the world, similarly to many queer and disabled people. BUT Hartley as a villain (at the point he came out) did have a lot more nuance and never really devolved into caricature - both the positive and negative aspects of his attempted wealth redistribution were shown, and ultimately his becoming good really didn't fundamentally change the character’s approach to the world. His conflicts with the Very Conservative heroes impacts his coming out to Wally AND REFLECTS POORLY ON THE HEROES which turns the moral roles and to some extent retroactively flips the villain/hero dynamic. Even if Hart isnt a villain anymore, he is still a moral character foil to Barry for Wally -and Barry is kinda the archetypal conservative moral hero of the DC. (For the conservatism; Barry is very conservative but so is Wally - theyre a really interesting depiction of conservativeness (in the kiwi sense (sorta) not the bigot sense (sorta) and I refuse to derail to explain any longer). All of this means that Hartley comes across as a very moral and complicated person, whose queerness and disability inherently affects his actions without overshadowing them and ultimately pushes him to be a good person (even with his prior history of villianry).