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madimpossibledreameri'll get to posting actual things when i finish them
i just...
i was recently thinking about the flash, and i know this isn't news to anyone, but i just had this full-blown revelation of 'oh, oh yeah, we totally should have seen the absolute fail of supernatural finale coming, the cw is terrible at writing anything and manages to problematize everything'
i can't even remember how many seasons of The Flash i watched but i think it was two. i really loved it at the time, but there was something that made me uneasy and i couldn't quite put my finger on it. except now, thinking back on it, i really really can.
warnings: pseudo-incest, problematic hollywood romance tropes, general cw problematic shenanigans, tokenism, possible spoilers
...it also occurred to me that The CW shares its initials with Content Warning and i now don't care what it actually stands for as of this moment they forever stand for Content Warning. it's very nice of them to point out what you'll get watching any of their shows. i don't think it's on purpose because i think they'd make fun of the need for them but it's unintentionally helpful.
i didn't like iris west. now, before i get slammed, i want to put in some context: i didn't like her writing.
pseudo-incest relationships squick me as much as the 'real deal'. that's why i refuse to acknowledge dawn/xander as canon and am probably never going to actually read the comics. so the fact that this was a thing that happened put me off, though i couldn't name it at the time.
also, there's the fact that the cw should never be trusted to write anything ever. i love the casting of iris. i love, well, a lot of the casting. misha collins is a sometimes bumbling treasure who puts in effort to understand fans without outright dismissing them (most of the time). i don't know much about the background of actors because most of the time i love characters, not actors, and i don't tend to follow them. (y'all should watch stonehenge apocalypse though that is gold for a terrible fun b-movie.)
but it's very clear that the actors for iris and barry and LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE in what i watched put in more effort than the writers ever did. i read some articles and twitter posts and tumblr posts about how the cw does this, the cw always does this, why are we even surprised anymore? i might be misremembering, it might be a few years since then, but thinking back it felt like they'd put in the worst of the Nice Guy(TM) storyline on both sides just in season one. sure, barry puts in some slight effort when it comes to her new boyfriend, but it's still clearly hostile and the only time they get along is the times where they're scheming to keep her safe in that little glass cabinet that you keep dainty glass collectable figurines in. they write him as a stalker, but it being cw romanticize it just like the rest of hollywood. complete with the worshiping her and putting her on a pedestal except when the goddess doesn't act the way you want her to because that proves she's a real human being (except she's not well-written either). he's still clearly in her life as her friend only because he's hoping for some action, even if he's convinced himself he's the good guy and that's not what's happening. and the cw can't imagine a woman's life not revolving around men so she 'strings him along while he's in the friend zone' like that's a legit thing and gets threatened and tries to ruin his relationship. plus apparently there were some really racist stereotypes that the writers apparently didn't notice because they 'don't see color' or whatever terrible insensitive garbo excuse they spouted at the time. i'm not the person to speak to this really but i did find a compelling argument and can't unsee it.
can someone confirm my memory for me? or is it just the cw framing of scenes that are actually tamer (i.e. the network is putting in overtones and reading into it and spouting their version of events like it's valid)? i'd check, but i don't have the means to other than outright renting it from, say, amazon and i don't want to give cw any money.
tl;dr: stalking is not romantic, it will never be romantic, please stop this hollywood/every media thing ever, and also please stop writing women as stereotypes. women can get along! women don't have to be fighting over a man! *gasp* sometimes, women even just, i dunno, live their lives as happy and single because that is a thing that actually exists!
what i would have liked to have seen: let's not make them "adopted siblings" because that's skeevy as all hell and doesn't need to be there. they can still be really close, but it's just. not. necessary. maybe barry's old enough to go emancipated, which would bring its own set of interesting, not-often-seen-on-tv problems. let's have barry see her as a friend until he gets to work with her for a few seasons, or maybe have a small crush that he doesn't need to be all weird about (but lbr baby steps let's just take this off the table until they've proven they can handle the small things). let's have her career actually be relevant. let's see the women on the show use their skills and be plot-relevant like the men, instead of plot-relevant like all the annoying damsel-in-distressing them or whatever other tropes you find convenient. let's be consistent about who barry reveals his secret id to (hint: if it's only just men, that's not. good.) let's see her not. defined. by. her. relationships. with. men. let's do more than just cast with diversity in mind, let's actually write with diversity in mind.
and i'm like...please cw, but also all media, write your characters better. all of them. women of color deserve better than this. hell, straight white men deserve better than this, because writing people as they should be only helps them be more interesting, be better people, help the audiences be better people... i know you don't care about that because you're the cw and you're doubling down on the demographics you want to have (i.e. white straight young homophobic males possibly with some kind of venn-diagram overlapping with certain extremist groups), but seriously, these are good actors, they deserve better than to be on your terrible network.
i just...
i was recently thinking about the flash, and i know this isn't news to anyone, but i just had this full-blown revelation of 'oh, oh yeah, we totally should have seen the absolute fail of supernatural finale coming, the cw is terrible at writing anything and manages to problematize everything'
i can't even remember how many seasons of The Flash i watched but i think it was two. i really loved it at the time, but there was something that made me uneasy and i couldn't quite put my finger on it. except now, thinking back on it, i really really can.
warnings: pseudo-incest, problematic hollywood romance tropes, general cw problematic shenanigans, tokenism, possible spoilers
...it also occurred to me that The CW shares its initials with Content Warning and i now don't care what it actually stands for as of this moment they forever stand for Content Warning. it's very nice of them to point out what you'll get watching any of their shows. i don't think it's on purpose because i think they'd make fun of the need for them but it's unintentionally helpful.
i didn't like iris west. now, before i get slammed, i want to put in some context: i didn't like her writing.
pseudo-incest relationships squick me as much as the 'real deal'. that's why i refuse to acknowledge dawn/xander as canon and am probably never going to actually read the comics. so the fact that this was a thing that happened put me off, though i couldn't name it at the time.
also, there's the fact that the cw should never be trusted to write anything ever. i love the casting of iris. i love, well, a lot of the casting. misha collins is a sometimes bumbling treasure who puts in effort to understand fans without outright dismissing them (most of the time). i don't know much about the background of actors because most of the time i love characters, not actors, and i don't tend to follow them. (y'all should watch stonehenge apocalypse though that is gold for a terrible fun b-movie.)
but it's very clear that the actors for iris and barry and LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE in what i watched put in more effort than the writers ever did. i read some articles and twitter posts and tumblr posts about how the cw does this, the cw always does this, why are we even surprised anymore? i might be misremembering, it might be a few years since then, but thinking back it felt like they'd put in the worst of the Nice Guy(TM) storyline on both sides just in season one. sure, barry puts in some slight effort when it comes to her new boyfriend, but it's still clearly hostile and the only time they get along is the times where they're scheming to keep her safe in that little glass cabinet that you keep dainty glass collectable figurines in. they write him as a stalker, but it being cw romanticize it just like the rest of hollywood. complete with the worshiping her and putting her on a pedestal except when the goddess doesn't act the way you want her to because that proves she's a real human being (except she's not well-written either). he's still clearly in her life as her friend only because he's hoping for some action, even if he's convinced himself he's the good guy and that's not what's happening. and the cw can't imagine a woman's life not revolving around men so she 'strings him along while he's in the friend zone' like that's a legit thing and gets threatened and tries to ruin his relationship. plus apparently there were some really racist stereotypes that the writers apparently didn't notice because they 'don't see color' or whatever terrible insensitive garbo excuse they spouted at the time. i'm not the person to speak to this really but i did find a compelling argument and can't unsee it.
can someone confirm my memory for me? or is it just the cw framing of scenes that are actually tamer (i.e. the network is putting in overtones and reading into it and spouting their version of events like it's valid)? i'd check, but i don't have the means to other than outright renting it from, say, amazon and i don't want to give cw any money.
tl;dr: stalking is not romantic, it will never be romantic, please stop this hollywood/every media thing ever, and also please stop writing women as stereotypes. women can get along! women don't have to be fighting over a man! *gasp* sometimes, women even just, i dunno, live their lives as happy and single because that is a thing that actually exists!
what i would have liked to have seen: let's not make them "adopted siblings" because that's skeevy as all hell and doesn't need to be there. they can still be really close, but it's just. not. necessary. maybe barry's old enough to go emancipated, which would bring its own set of interesting, not-often-seen-on-tv problems. let's have barry see her as a friend until he gets to work with her for a few seasons, or maybe have a small crush that he doesn't need to be all weird about (but lbr baby steps let's just take this off the table until they've proven they can handle the small things). let's have her career actually be relevant. let's see the women on the show use their skills and be plot-relevant like the men, instead of plot-relevant like all the annoying damsel-in-distressing them or whatever other tropes you find convenient. let's be consistent about who barry reveals his secret id to (hint: if it's only just men, that's not. good.) let's see her not. defined. by. her. relationships. with. men. let's do more than just cast with diversity in mind, let's actually write with diversity in mind.
and i'm like...please cw, but also all media, write your characters better. all of them. women of color deserve better than this. hell, straight white men deserve better than this, because writing people as they should be only helps them be more interesting, be better people, help the audiences be better people... i know you don't care about that because you're the cw and you're doubling down on the demographics you want to have (i.e. white straight young homophobic males possibly with some kind of venn-diagram overlapping with certain extremist groups), but seriously, these are good actors, they deserve better than to be on your terrible network.
