#the bad cold i had the first time 110% came from there and my coworker caught it too

[aidenwaites]

It's honestly shocking I never caught covid working at the studio

[longitudinalwaveme]

Worst Flash Storylines and Plot Ideas of All Time

As you’ve probably ascertained from the general contents of this blog, the Flash is my favorite comic book series. I love the characters and most of the stories. However, just like any series that’s been around for eighty years (counting the Jay Garrick stuff), the Flash does, unfortunately, have some truly terrible stories and plot ideas. 

In terms of terrible plot ideas that didn’t completely ruin the surrounding stories: 

1. Barry Allen uses the Mirror Master’s mirrors to manipulate Iris into agreeing to start dating him again (Flash #109). Creepy, Barry. Just creepy. The story is great Silver Age fun otherwise. 

2. Iris West: meanest woman alive. Iris was, by and large, incredibly awful to Barry up until maybe about a year before their 1966 marriage. Almost every time she shows up in an early Silver Age issue, you will admire her daring and independence (this is good) and be bewildered as to why on Earth Barry would want to spend time with a woman who is constantly calling him slow, lazy, and ambition-less (this is not good). It doesn’t really affect any one issue too much, but when read in a conglomerate, she starts looking really awful. Although as bad as Early Silver Age Iris seems as a romantic interest, she’s got nothing on Silver Age Superman and Lois Lane, the most dysfunctional couple in the DCU. 

3. Wally West’s zero-effort code name and costume (Flash #110). It really could not be more obvious how little effort the writers were putting into creating this character. The duplicate origin is also pretty cheesy, but there are enough differences from Barry’s origin for it not to frustrate me. But the name “Kid Flash” and the fact that his first costume was literally identical to Barry’s just feel incredibly lazy. Barry and Wally do have an adorable dynamic in the issue, though, so it’s by no means all bad. 

4. Barry Allen waiting an entire year after his marriage to tell his wife that he’s really the Flash. Frustrating and unnecessary; especially since Joan Garrick had been in on her husband’s secret since the 1940s. 

5. Iris Allen is FROM THE FUTURE. I both love and hate this idea. It’s so perfectly comic-booky, but at the same time, it opened the floodgates for the Allen family being a confusing, time-displaced mess. 

6. The Trial of Barry Allen. This one’s weird. I like many of the individual issues in this arc, and I actually think the last two issues are really great as an ending for Barry Allen’s original run, but this storyline dragged on for waaaaaay too long. There’s a reason I call it the Arc that Never Ends. Also, the titular trial is actually the least interesting part of the entire storyline. His battles with the Rogues and Kadabra are far more interesting. 

7. Wally West’s borderline creepy, chauvinistic attitude towards women under Mike Baron (and, to a much lesser extent, William Messner-Loebs). There’s being a hormonal twenty-something, and then there’s going through girlfriends at the rate other people change their socks. Messner-Loebs mostly avoided this issue by making it clear that Wally was under intense psychological stress that was negatively impacting his behavior, but under Baron and in some of his JLE appearances, he comes across as a real creep around women. 

8. Kadabra overkill under Mark Waid: I like Kadabra, but when he’s the main villain in like four distinct arcs, it gets to be a bit much. It’s like modern Eobard. He is legitimately written well, though, so he doesn’t drag down any of the stories too much. 

9. Pointlessly Dead Rogues: Killing off the Rogues in Underworld Unleashed for no good reason (the rest of the story is great, especially the Trickster). 

10. Pointlessly Dead Rogues 2: Electric Boogaloo: The Golden Glider’s pointless death to build up a character who was himself killed two issues later. (The rest of the story is decent.) Also, the treatment of Lisa in general post-Crisis is frustrating, since she becomes considerably more unhinged than she was before. 

11. Any time Waid tried to write McCulloch, with the exception of Flash vol. 2 #105 (and even there, he seemed off). It’s like he forgot Evan wasn’t Sam. 

12. Apparently, the Top trying to blow up both Central City and half the world makes him a loser? Also, he suddenly hates Piper for no readily apparent reason. (At least the story had some good Piper and Wally bits.) 

13. BARRY ALLEN HAS A SECRET EVIL TWIN! DUN DUN DUN! (The rest of the story, where we get to meet a whole whack of interesting future Flashes, is actually pretty good, but whoo boy, the Malcolm reveal feels like it came straight out of a soap opera.) 

14. In order for Captain Cold to ANGST, the Golden Glider’s pointless death remained in place for over ten years. It did give us a really, really good Capt. Cold story, at least...but it’s still fridging. 

15. Rainbow Raider’s mean-spirited murder by Blacksmith. Poor Roy. 

16. Albert Desmond becomes Hannibal Lecter, only twenty times as rude, for a Gotham Central arc that would’ve been terrific without him as the main villain. 

17. Owen Mercer is an idiotic child murderer and gets killed by the Rogues. Why was this necessary? (The rest of Blackest Night: The Flash is pretty good.) 

18. Josh Jackam-Mardon’s murder. The murder of small children for shock value is pretty gross. Especially since nothing was ever really done with it. 

19. Barry’s PARENTS ARE DEEEEAAAAD! (Okay, it’s really just his mom, but still. This is a very frustrating retcon, since originally his parents were alive and well until after his own death.) 

20. Albert Desmond was Barry’s jerk coworker; which never impacted the plot or led to anything. As a result, it’s just another frustrating retcon. 

21. Sam Scudder murdered someone before becoming the Mirror Master. Yet another Johns retcon that never went anywhere and only serves to darken the Silver and Bronze Age stories after the fact. 

22. Flashpoint (a decent story) wiped out a whole bunch of characters I really liked from existence for several years. Evan McCulloch’s still not back. 

23. Giving the Rogues metahuman powers doesn’t suit them, on the whole. They work better without them. 

24. Roy’s second pointless, brutal death in (I think) Forever Evil. 

25. IT WAS MEEEEE, BARRY! After serving as the main villain for like six arcs in eight years, I’m glad that Eobard finally seems to be getting a rest. The level of bad things he was responsible for was getting ridiculous. 

26. Sam/Lisa. WHY? (The only time it even kind of worked was in Forever Evil.) 

In terms of entire storylines I didn’t like: 

1. The Flash: The Most Terribly Written Man Alive. Poor Bart is aged up with no adequate explanation, loses all the traits that made him a likeable character, fights some awful villains, and then is murdered by the badly OOC Rogues. Meanwhile, Inertia goes from an at least somewhat sympathetic villain to a complete psychopath with little explanation, a murder is retconned into one of Captain Cold’s reformed periods, the Pied Piper and the Trickster completely forget that they’re supposed to be reformed, Abra Kadabra inexplicably teams up with the Rogues despite generally being a solo operative, and all of the Rogues act like total morons, willingly following a teenage speedster for no adequately explained reason. UGH. 

2. Countdown to Infinite Crisis: Even though Piper and Trickster were probably the best part of Countdown, that isn’t saying much. Both of them are uncharacteristically stupid (especially James), and James is a grade-A jerk to Piper for no reason. Also, both of them continue to forget that they reformed, and then James gets brutally murdered and Piper almost loses his mind. Also, the other Rogues cameo, and continue to act like idiots. Countdown: it really does ruin everything it touches. 

Superboy Prime will kill you! He’ll kill you to DEATH! And after you read Countdown, you’ll wish he had killed you to death. 

3. The Identity Crisis Tie-In Retcon: So, you know all that awesome character development the Rogues have had over the years? Well, forget all that, because it was all just Roscoe brainwashing them! Which was something he could definitely do before this story! And why did he do this? Why, because Barry Allen, one of the most upstanding men in the DCU, brainwashed him! Also, apparently, the Top had a huge bodycount that we never heard about back in the Bronze Age, because we need even MORE grimdark retcons for our cheerful Silver/Bronze Age history! I like Geoff Johns’ work, I really do....but BOY HOWDY does he need to lay off on the retcons sometimes. 

4. Identity Crisis: With the exception of Owen’s introduction and the establishment of the relationship between him and Digger, this story was pretty awful all around. More specifically, as far as the Flash was concerned, it was responsible for Digger’s second pointless death. It also killed off poor Jack Drake and poor, mistreated Sue Dibney, who deserved MUCH better. And the Justice League, including Barry, are A-OK with brainwashing, apparently. Comics are fun! 

These last two stories are pretty recent, and they did have some parts I liked, but on the whole I felt they also belonged on the list. 

5. The Trickster finally returns! Hurrah! Except it turns out that he’s way more like the Joker now than he ever was before, and he mind-controls the city in a super-creepy way. A very disappointing return for the character, especially since it was set up really well. 

6. Forever Evil: Captain Cold becomes a murderous dictator with a stupid Santa Beard, all of the Rogues get horrible costumes, and Sam completes his mutation into Evan-in-all-but-name. There are some good characters bits in the story (even for Cold), but on the whole, I found the story to just be unlikeable and depressing and thought Cold was pretty out-of-character. Poor Commander Cold....

So, what are your least favorite Flash storylines and plot ideas? 

[galacticvampirisms]

I realized I can’t take Benadryl to go to sleep because I’ll sleep through my alarm! So this because there’s no one I can talk to.

Work has been hell again. For the past two or three weekends it has been. The only respite was the one Saturday where I did a school event and and got a $50 Visa gift card. I spent it all on art supplies basically immediately. But the Friday before and Sunday after were awful. The next weekend, I had a dog every day that’d been home-groomed for x amount of time. Longest was ??? The woman’s first language wasn’t English but Mandarin, and I couldn’t communicate effectively with her. But the dog was nigh impossible to safely groom without people staring at me like I was torturing the dog by holding her leg. My boss undermined by special handling fee by arguing through another manager that we should’ve warned her when she first came in about the fee. Guess what, new dog wtf. Okay, well we should’ve called her. Bitch barely understood me at check in, she didn’t understand that her dog was done when I called her, and she definitely would not understand why Princess was more expensive. Okay, well we should’ve done it so you’re out $7. And my coworker was all “oh she wasn’t that bad.” You. Weren’t. There. Bitch. And of course the woman still had a bitch fit about the cost. The manager without a brain that the store leader was speaking through removed the hand from his ass long enough to agree later that she was crazy. You think?

This weekend so far someone deleted my block today and I had a dachshund try to take my finger off while in the kennel. I refused to do it and warned the owner, who came back with my request dog’s family (all related), in tears as I was leaving. Nevermind Friday I was so emotionally fragile I spend most of the time crying, and then my boss, the puppetmaster idiot, told me and the bather to move all the tables and drawers to the back of the salon so the floors could be stripped and waxed overnight. The bather is kinda useless as anything but a receptionist (can’t cut nails ever, tried to pawn a puppy off on me, but she’s quitting to get trained by a mobile grooming company so that’s gonna end well lmao), and she had just hurt her back. The tables alone are like 80-110 lbs. I asked who was going to help me and when he laughed I got mad. Btw, they didn’t do shit to the floors in the salon so the entire venture was useless. If I’m still working when it happens again, I will refuse to move anything the first night because this is the third time that’s happened.

 I want to quit when my contract is up if I can find a job that A. let’s me work Friday-Sunday and earn the same amount I currently do if not more (am willing to work 10 hour shifts tho) B. Gives me the chance to become full time if grad school doesn’t work out the way I want it to and C. Doesn’t have dickass for a boss like my store leader. So I’m looking at a private grooming company, and I’m anxious because I called and they requested a resume and I don’t know how far back I should write my jobs because I’ve had too many.

One of the zines I’ve been working on has been having me screaming. In contrast, the other has been lovely. They pushed back pre-orders a bit because I told them I was too overwhelmed with finals and everything. But once I get the first zine’s final piece done I’m quitting and never looking back at their shit again or joining zines led by them.

I had my first HRT shot and nothing’s really different. I don’t think it helped that I lowkey have a cold or something with pollen going on so if anything happened to my voice at all it was masked by that (Wednesday I did have a very hoarse throat all of a sudden that went away so I’m uncertain?) I also accidentally sedated myself Tuesday and missed most of my classes. I keep saying it as a joke (dog groomer, sedated dogs, also I’m an idiot with medicine) but it actually put a lot of extra stress on me with school and I’ve been even more vulnerable about shit because of it. I feel like I’m going to fail my classes even though I have 2/4 projects done and some of the extra prints I’m doing are bonus, while the paintings aren’t due until Thursday. 

I had a nightmare about school. And about this guy I like(d). He’s dating. The emotionless cyborg is dating, and he’s too busy to do things like DnD (why did I ever get my hopes up that it’d actually happen). And I’m still alone. With a stupid crush and stupid nightmares and stupid him bought stupid tickets to the thing stupid me introduced him to. Everyone is dating and fucking and together and I’m going to be alone. Forever. It feels like it will be that way at least.

I feel like the villain with my best friend. He’s upset that I’m burnt out on a particular muse and apparently in my Benadryl-induced stupor when he said one of the words I hate (it’d never come up before so it’s not like he did it on purpose), I had an extremely averse reaction. He didn’t talk to me all the next day except to say I was being over-dramatic, which really pissed me off. Apparently he can’t be bothered to remember I care very much about words or that he has a mechanism in place to step away from a conversation and discuss it later, but he has to tell me the time he’ll come back. 

I was mostly settled after a long and emotional conversation where I kept crying as I admitted some of my more stupid insecurities. Shit like how even though I really, genuinely am happy that he has a fallback for his anxiety in tumblr that I still get tied up inside knowing he interacts with people who hated me. Partly drove me away from RP and has me convinced to never go back, even if I had the time. He talks about how D is talked about all the time on his roleplay account but I don’t see it ever. It’s always really bad habits D tried to break his muse of to make a more supportive family. 

He’s burnt out on me. He was upset that I was burnt out on Dwayne and felt rejected but how am I supposed to feel about the opposite? I try to play it like it’s just a joke to me or something, but it hurts. So badly. I wasn’t rejecting him; I tried all the different ways I could to keep going. But I used to get to rp in 3-4 different universes, with different characters, and that variety made it so I didn’t feel like I was dragging my feet through the same dirt all the time. 

That doesn’t make sense as a metaphor but it does to me.

It also hurts that I can’t find some way to rp that doesn’t depend on him. It’s not for lack of trying. I’ve gone to about 3-4 dramwidth groups (some he doesn’t know about because I had kinda gone in with a downer attitude if I’m honest). RP has always been an anxiety relief for me when it’s with someone I trust. But that’s just him now (thought the DnD group would be that but it’s never gonna happen is it). 

I can’t get anyone to talk to me at all, and I don’t have therapy until Monday, and if I wasn’t so tired and anxious about having 6 dogs tomorrow and moving everything back again (the tables too I’m sure if they actually keep their word about doing the floors in the salon), I’d be up and either overeating or doing something dumb to make myself hurt. But I’m already doing that anyway os.