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dailycass-cain · 1 year

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Dark Crisis wrapped up today with #7. So it's no better time than to talk about Cassandra Cain and DC “Mega Events”. How she's faired in them and compare fairly how the most recent said event was for the character.

Now, just a heads up this is me talking about universal events in DC. Not Bat-specific ones. So No Man's Land, Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive, Night of the Monster Men, Joker War, Fear State, etc.

The very first mega event Cass took part in was Joker: Last Laugh (I know right? I said no Batman but guess who the mega event centered on? 🙃🙃🙃) were said Clown Prince of Crime infects various supervillains with a modified form of Joker Venom and set them upon the DCU as his "lasting legacy" because he thought he was dying (sadly he wasn't).

#3 She shows up to find Harley Quinn with Spoiler. And we get this being the only big highlight of her in the main book:

Cass is well-- overtly cocky in this comic and she gets a hubris check (and her meta-human weakness being exploited as she takes on 3 superpowered Jokerized foes with Steph).

This totally makes the tie-in issue all the more baffling as Cass just straight destroys a Jokerized Shadow Thief in the tie-in with this event in issue Batgirl Vol. 1 #21.

Like outside the event had NUMEROUS Cass appearances? Besides her main book, we get good stuff like this little bit in Wonder Woman #175 below (the issue features all the female heroes of the DCU at that time having their moment and this was Cass's):

That and this event gave us her only team-up with Supergirl (Linda Danvers) in Supergirl #63 where she fights a Bizzaro Supergirl and a Jokerized Two-Face (her second canon encounter with the villain, and the last time she’d fight him canonically until this year’s Batman One Bad Day: Two-Face #1) with the Linda variant.

The next Cass appearance in a DC mega event wouldn't come until... 2007 with World War III.

Aka the only reason, she's in this "event" was to showcase HOW Deathstroke nabbed her and explain why she was EVIL due to "One Year Later".

Now I know I could list Infinite Crisis (the event prior to this). Yes, Cass did have crossovers prior to the “main series”. I.e. #60--71 is one long “tie-in” as she takes on the Society (who Penguin uses to send assassins against her like the Brotherhood of Evil and Deathstroke/Ravager), OMAC, and the Society again (with Nyssa being a member along with using them to make a weapon for her advantage).

Of course, the biggest effect of the main series would also haunt Cass aka the destruction of Bludhaven:

:But again, she never showed up in the “main series”. Just dealing with the aftermath. Unlike say WW III where she appears throughout the mini-series (which mainly tells of Black Adam wanting revenge against the world for what was wrought upon him in the 52 series).

Cass’s role though is more “filler”:

That's it.

That's the extent of "WHY" she's justified in this event.

We already know HOW this goes down (not good for Cass) and it's just "Why do we need this?!" Other than to fill that gap between OYL and Titans East (which was going on in the Teen Titans comic at the time this event was going on. It was DC’s attempt to get the last gasp of EVIL Cass before they undid the STUPID mistake they made back in 2006).🙃

I mean they did retcon showing that it was her and Alfred who really was looking out for Gotham during that year (and not just Harvey Dent with a few weeks of training from Bruce). But oh shucks that wasn’t the story we COULD’VE GOTTEN INSTEAD.

A year later we'd get our very next appearance of Cass in an event with Final Crisis #1 and she's in this group shot here and...

That's it. That's all she does. She doesn’t even show up as a corrupted female Fury (but then again maybe that’s for the best). I guess the closest we get to an actual “appearance” is the prelude to the event which had DC running various mini-series that all fed into this comic.

For Cass she appeared near the tail end of Gotham Underground (her and Helena mopped up some of the gangs that were at war with one another trying to take over the Gotham Underworld with Great White having been taken out by Bane).

We wouldn't get another appearance of Cass in a mainline DC Event until--- 2015 with Convergence.

But it’s a bit of rinse and repeat here. Not really doing much in the main book Cass does but showing up towards the final issue of it in various panels (like the one above).

Her, Steph, and Tim do have their part in Convergence Batgirl #1-2. But yeah... I made my thoughts much on how flawed that series was (even if #1 has a few cute moments).

Truth be told, I rather enjoy her one panel cameo in Nightwing & Oracle #2, where she and Steph attend Dick/Babs’ wedding. And I didn’t even realize that it was them until much latter on.

So we’re given another event by DC that didn't treat the character with any sort of respect. Surprisingly, it would take until 2020 we'd get an event that would treat Cass fairly in Dark Knights: Death Metal.

Cass shows up in various forms in the event first in #4 as Batgirl in the "bad ending" to Final Crisis with Darkseid winning (seriously it’s little bits like this that writer Scott Snyder pays so much attention as these three heroes were the ones really not accounted for when the New God took over the Earth at that time period.

Then right after that issue began showing up all over the place in the event. From being a supporting cast appearance in the secondary story in Dark Knights: Death Metal Robin King #1 (along with a one-panel cameo in the first as an evil Batman being tortured by the Batman who Keks) to appearing throughout the remaining three issues of the main book.

Along with showing up in Dark Nights Death Metal: The Last 52 - War of the Multiverses #1 (in the Dexter Soy drawn scenes particularly because I guess he loved to draw her) and another as Batgirl in the Prime one-shot to this event.

Though to her appearance in the later I more attribute to timey whimey multiverse shenanigans as Nightwing was flashing between his Justice League tie-in garb to his usual attire in the story. So I guess he and Cass had “issues”.

That or an artist slipped this in because she was back to being Batgirl in the main Batman comics at this time.

I gotta say this is probably one of the better events for Cass. Even if she didn't do anything it got you interested in with a, "Hey who is this?" And blows the lid off the rest of the events prior.

This leads us to the latest event, Dark Crisis of Infinite Earths. Cass did have appearances in the main series yes. I did enjoy the comic because of #2 and well three of my favorite DC characters being in an event warms my heart.

Look I love Cyborg Superman too. Don’t judge me.

While I did ENJOY Dark Crisis, were the Cass appearances throughout the main series good?

No.

The book's core theme is legacy and yeah the Batgirls were there but never once did the Batgirl mantle mean anything in the event save kick Punchline in the face (which okay is VERY DESERVED given she’s abusing their girlfriend in her mini’s). But...

Cass/Steph/Babs never once appear in the "legacy" shots of the book nor is the Batgirl mantle even treated as such either (unlike Green Lanterns, the Flashes, the Supermen, the Batmen, and Wonder Women).

Really of the Batgirls in the event, probably Steph had the best showing in it of the three. She had a little subplot go on from the beginning to end with Nocturna.

I mean yeah both Cass/Steph had a good showing in The Flash #786 (which isn't all surprising as it is the best comic DC is currently churning out).

But even with the final issue when there COULD'VE been a moment. No really there SHOULD’VE BEEN A MOMENT.

We literally had main universe Cazzam and all we got was this:

How do you screw up something so awesome? Tom Taylor would’ve freaking given us it! Heck why wasn’t he on speed dial to the editor saying, “Um yeah Cazzam needs to do something with that specify cover coming up in January).

But there wasn't.

I do like that Cass was consistently SHOWN in the final battle attacking things way out of her class (she literally tried to attack the Spectre and was shown attacking B and C-list supervillains who are all physically strong).

But yeah.

I'm conflicted about the event when it comes to that when thinking about the overall appearance of Cass in this. She appeared and fought, but really didn't do anything of note (unlike Death Metal where SOMETHING of a status quo shift hit her directly).

I digress we didn't get that ACTUAL ramification with Cass until LAST WEEK'S BATGIRLS #13!!! It's only been implied never fully shown Cass had her past memories (or old origin fully back).

A wee bit two years later. 😬

I mean if you take the implication that she’s Orphan during this event and at the start of Joker War she still is such and then during said event becomes Batgirl again with Steph (Batman: Joker War Zone #1):

Again, I'll take Dark Crisis and Death Metal over the stuff DC had given Cass in the past. Even if they screwed up the overall legacy message (at least for Batgirls) I'll take it over World War III or Convergence any day.

Cause at the very least both treated the character somewhat fairly. The message was there even if it wasn't fully stated in Dark Crisis as it was for Death Metal. So we got a happy Cass in the end in both:

#dc comics #cassandra cain

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plutonicmirror · 1 year

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Zero Hour (1994) #0 [and Zero Hour in general]

Let’s continue my Zero Hour first reading. After skipping some filler tie-in issues, I reached the finale. Again, funny numbering gimmick with a 0 issue. I think Marvel also had something similar with their -1 issues back then. Oh, the 90s!

Hal Jordan Parallax reveals his master plan: “I’m gonna erase the universe so hard, I’m gonna create a new one where everything is right and everyone is happy™”. Classic case of a hero reacting to tragedy the readers are supposed to know about the Emerald Twilight story arc, but I’m LARPing as a snot-eating 10yo in 1994 who just started reading comics and doesn’t have enough attention span to know the lore with absurd amounts of cope and a plan that sounds extremely good on paper, but that other heroes must oppose because morality yadda yadda yadda. Looking at you, Injusticeverse.

Shout-out to my man Danger, a D-lister that was brought to the final fight fOr a ReAsOn. I’m gonna be honest, I skipped his tie-in because I couldn’t give a fuck about who he was. I usually like me some B/C/D/Z listers, but I also don’t give a fuck about DC’s Titans and his book was apparently tied to that whole mess so I was like “meh, next”. I mean, this young dude is a nobody right....?

*one trip to a comics wiki later*

Oh...

Ahem, moving on. The Spectre shows up looking for REVENGE after all of the JSA folks get ultra aged up or straight up deleted from existence, even though they had previously asked him for help and he was like “nah that’s human bullshit, I ain’t movin’ any finger”. Good job, asshole.

So yeah, remember our D-lister? Turns out his power (which is absorbing energy and making explosions) is specifically needed to counter Parallax’s new Big Bang. So our heroes’ plan is...to recreate the universe exactly as it was. So basically Parallax’s plan but done by them because fuck you Parallax, you don’t get to play God. Except...it doesn’t come out exactly as it was, because there’s “““subtle changes”““. In a meta way, this event was supposed to be a soft reboot to fix some of the fuckery that Crisis on Infinite Earths (a big event I haven’t read yet out of fear) caused. Was it accomplished? According to Comic Pop’s Back Issues video on this event... it kind of wasn’t. Sidenote, I highly recommend that channel’s Back Issues series, after reading an event it’s fun to watch a recap that adds background bits for the uncultured (like me) even if I sometimes feel the critique of the host is too harsh.

A not-Killing-Joke’d Batgirl from another timeline who temporarily sided with Parallax because she was doing her best “I want to be a real boy” Pinocchio impersonation got killed in the heat of the moment, so the other normal-powered hero in the room (Green Arrow) gets pissed at his former bestie. After this whole event he ragequits btw and apparently a common joke is that many readers think that should be the standard reaction to the whole thing.

Parallax is seemingly killed but it’s comics so he’ll be fine, trust the process. If I recall correctly, Hal gets to be the new Spectre for a while [*Vietnam flashbacks of Identity Crisis*]. I forgot to mention that the current Green Lantern of the time Kyle Rayner and Wally West were also “killed off”. Again, they’ll be fine. I just didn’t care enough to read a wiki and find out how they come back. But that bit brings us to this “oh yeah, that happened” moment:

Power Girl was pregnant and gave birth to a baby with the help of Wonder Woman who conveniently decided to play midwife instead of stepping up to the threath. Bue hey, guess who also was sort of born in the aftermath of this event? That’s right, I was! So surely that means that baby is a very important char-

Whoops, nevermind.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON THE WHOLE EVENT:

“7/10 it was alright” - IGN.

The contrarian in me doesn’t hate it like most nerds out there do, but it’s certainly not the greatest event ever written. Granted I went in without knowledge of a lot of stuff, like how was I supposed to make sense of what was happening in the Hawkman tie-in issue aka the whole “let’s try to solve the problem of having multiple origins for this character by literally merging them all into one” thing? How could I know what CoIE fuckery needed to be fixed if I don’t know the big impact of CoIE besides Supergirl being killed off (this fact is cultural osmosis at this point)? Did it matter to me in the long run? Not really, because it’s not like I feel compelled to keep reading DC continuity and make sense of it for the time being. The art was good, the colors were pretty, the Parallax suit was rad, the pose Ollie made at the end was Jojo-esque and dramatic, Batman fucking off from the final fight via being killed was good.

Now, the tie-ins. Some of them were fun, some of them were a drag to read because I had no idea of background info for most of them. Almost all of the Superman tie-ins were fun to read with the exception of Steel because I was tired of wiki-hunting when I reached his issue, shout out to the alternate Jor-El and Lara, the Alpha Centurion and the “Superman tries to save the Kents during the chronal rift” stories (Superman vol. 2 #93, Adventures of Superman #516, Action Comics #703 respectively). The Legion of Superheroes and adjacent issues were extremely confusing to me as a casual but oddly engaging. I had no idea what was happening but it was sort of fun. It revived my itch to read LoSH comics even if I’m still feeling overwhelmed at the mere thought of going further with that task. Oh yeah, the silent Green Arrow issue was a lot of fun! (Green Arrow vol. 2 #90).

The characters introduced were a mixed bag. On one hand we have Bart Allen aka Impulse, who was created in the prequel to this event and was sort of interesting. But then the chronal rift time erasure bullshit happens and since he’s from the 30th century he basically does nothing of importance... Alpha Centurion, as I mentioned, was a fun read in his Adventures issue but in the core event he was... a convenient minion. Thriumph? Thriump was an annoying character, one of those “oh yeah he was totally there in the beggining of the big team but the big name characters just don’t remember tee hee!”. Don’t worry though, he would later die of a cold. Or something like that. Extant felt edgy throughout most of the core issues and the tie-ins, he really had that Madara Uchiha endgame villain energy...until he was revealed to be just a pawn that was just rebelling. And then he fucks off. Shout-out to this specific goofy panel:

Tie-in issues skipped: Anima #7, Batman: Shadow of the Bat #31, Damage #6, Robin vol. 2 #10, Showcase ‘94 #10, Steel #8, Team Titans #24 (yeah, this team got erased from existence and I just couldn’t care), The Darkstars #24. Also skipped: all of the Zero Month aftermath gimmick #0/soft reboot issues.

New Year’s resolution when it comes to DC? I’ll get around reading the 70s Green Arrow and Green Lantern book. Ever since I found some academic paper on it that mentioned the words environmentalism and malthusian I was like “ok wtf I have to read this”.

Tytyty for reading my blog.

#actual blogging #comic book reading blogpost #mmmm yes continuity fuckery

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spite-and-waffles · 2 years

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A meta analysis on Oliver Queen written in Feb 2008 on Livejournal.

Workshop: "Writing Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)" by Merfilly

Just a quick warning to anyone reading this looking for current canon...while I may touch it, I have a disagreement with both Green Arrow: Year One and Green Arrow/Black Canary. In many ways, the character I have seen since Winick took on the book has been touch and go with his history. It happens, and is very easily explained, considering Winick's tour is post-resurrection. Death, if anything, should have a right to change a man.

Introducing...

Car. Plane. Gadget for every gimmick, gimmick for every trap. Sidekick. Costume. Rich lifestyle, with a need to do good.

Cool your bat-jets, folks...that's really Green Arrow I'm talking about.

He made his debut in More Fun Comics, back in November 1941. He ran in the book from issue 73 to issue 107, after which the superheroes of the title moved over to Adventure Comics instead. Creators Mort Weisinger and George Papp defined him, and opened the door for years of comparison to Batman almost from day one.

Like Batman, Green Arrow is merely human. He has, since the first days, relied on the use of a bow and arrow, employing several 'trick' arrows, arrows that ranged from a boxing glove to a cryogenic arrow. All of which, it should be noted, he invented himself. He might have been following in Bruce's shadow, but he had the brains to do it with, a facet that is sometimes, sadly, lost.

It's worth noting that Green Arrow began with his sidekick, Speedy. As storytelling progressed, it was decided GA had been active before Roy came along, but we had to wait quite some time to learn their separate origins.

Historical data

Oliver's history has been victim to subtle retcons over the years, but the gist is still the same...and made it mostly intact onto Smallville. He's the millionaire heir to Queen Industries, his parents having died when he was young, and he wound up playing Robinson Crusoe on his very own castaway island without a volleyball for a best friend.

To survive, he drew on his resourcefulness, made himself a bow and some arrows to hunt. Then there is conflict (pirates, hippies, drugrunners...take your pick) and he escapes back to civilization a much changed-man who chafes at the injustice of the world. He picks up the inspiration of Robin Hood, and soon becomes the latest of the costumed crowd to run amok on the bank robbers and kidnappers.

Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, Green Arrow was the much younger lover of Black Canary, the man she left her world, that of the JSA, for. Arrow's involvement in the League was argued as reasons to bar her from joining, by Hawkman, whose own girlfriend had been refused, but it was argued right back that Canary did not overlap her boyfriend's powers. Just goes to show the sexism there, as Ollie most certainly overlapped the other rich boy on the League.

Post-COIE, though, paints us a new story. One of a man behind the scenes at first, willing to avoid the limelight of financing the League, and taking his time showing just who he was to the five founders. The fact he already had Speedy with him in his first meeting with the League is a subtle retcon of the DC universe as a whole...between the two Crisis events, Speedy, not Robin, is the first sidekick, a factor often ignored or tossed aside on the thought that Robin was already running around in Gotham, just not worldwide. Ollie did eventually get invited to be the sixth member of the League.

According to the Black Canary mini series, we now have a new history of Ollie with the League. Both of them were 'rookies' when Batman is already established on the team...and that rings poor when every Bat-fan knows how long it took the League to convince the Bat to be on the League even unofficially, let alone a deciding member. It's also not holding up within DC continuity, as there have been other titles to suggest Oliver's place as the sixth member remains secure.

Speaking from his own book, Ollie came back to his wealth from that island, and balanced corporate heir with do-gooding, as well as raising a thirteen year old boy who was full of hero worship for him. It really wasn't enough to hold the character up in the light though.

So they stripped him of his money, his company, and eventually, his ward. They got a liberal man-for-the-people hero that Batman had never been, and that grittier image stuck hard. Long before Miller repainted our other rich-boy-with-issues, we had Oliver Queen penniless, learning what America really was in a hard hitting look at normal life, and finding out his teenage ward was a junkie.

Mike Grell took what Denny O'Neill had begun and got DC to give him the character for a Mature, No-Powers book. We got an Ollie who killed, who contemplated real-world issues, aged, and who otherwise showed every flaw and merit in close, graphic detail.

With lots of pretty, naked him and Dinah.

Those flaws started adding up too quickly. The long-time relationship with Dinah Lance (now the younger of the pair) came to an end in the face of infidelities and long absences, setting Ollie on what can only be termed a self-destructive spiral. He toured the world, looking for his place in it, trying to forget the woman who he'd driven away.

And met his son. Connor Hawke. Originally, he had no idea who the kid was. Met him in the ashram he had sought out for meditations, and they grew uneasily into friendship. Connor knew, but Ollie did not for a long time.

Then this nasty thing happened. Actually, it began around the time Dinah had left him. It was when Superman died and was reborn, because right around then, his absolute best friend forever, Hal Jordan, went bug-screwy-nuts.

Considering GA and GL had just had an adventure the issue before the one where this happened, is enough to make my fan-teeth itch. See the Hal Essay and you might know why I have issues with the handling. That Oliver Queen was not more involved in efforts to save Hal from himself is the rest of my grievance, given their canon near-inseparability since the 70s.

Eventually the bug-screwy-nuts Hal decided to remake the universe into the multiverse and undo the sacrifice of his other best friend, Barry Allen. This didn't set well with Ollie in the least, and when he had to, he fired what he believed to be a lethal arrow.

That, fellow fen, is when Oliver Queen died, in my own brain. The issues following Zero Hour were a meltdown that would eventually (not so long, as Supes still had the long hair) lead to his death in his own title, saving Metropolis from devastation with Superman right there.

Why'd he have to die, then, if Supes was on deck? Because Oliver Queen chose to die, rather than sacrifice being Green Arrow. The only way out of the plane, rigged with a dead man's switch and armed as a bomb, was to let Superman take his arm off.

Ollie let go of the switch instead.

Fast forward a little bit. Hal Jordan gets kicked in the conscience by Kyle, the baby Lantern. Comes home and saves the solar system...but does one selfish act before he does it at the cost of his life. He resurrects Oliver Queen, but with amnesia and from about 'ten years' (DC time) in the past.

Final Night was published in 1996.

Green Arrow relaunched in 2001 to explain the details of the resurrection. Five years, folks, between setting up his return and actually doing it. Why? Because Kevin Smith wanted the title, and was tied up forever. The Green Arrow title had come to an end, even with Connor Hawke as the Emerald Archer in 1998.

With the relaunch, came retcons. Minor ones, to start, and a return to old favorites. Connor and Ollie getting to know each other was written in great fashion. A new Speedy, this time a girl. Dinah/Ollie goodness. Roy and Ollie finding new ground with each other. Shifts in everything.

Personality and Interactions

Over all, Ollie's a charmer. He's a witty man, with good looks, and charisma. If you look at him in the Golden Age, he comes off as patronizing toward Roy on a lot of occasions, but no worse, normally, than Bruce toward Dick. By the Silver Age, his appearances were focused more on the League and Dinah Drake Lance, the widow from that other world, who was older and wiser than him in a lot of ways. By the modern age, he was still given to words like 'kiddo' (his most endearing poke at the fact he was the elder of post COIE Canary/Arrow), but had developed a more guarded personality. Never as closed off as the Bat became, he was less trusting in the Grell book, a facet Dixon and other writers made use of in the 25 issues that led to his death following Grell's departure.

Since Ollie's return...especially OYL, he's been presented as a man who looked in a mirror darkly and didn't really like what he saw reflecting back at him. He's more mature than he was during the 80s, less grim than he was in much of the 90s. Family, first and foremost, seems to drive him. He's still a charmer...but he's got to have a reason to charm you.

Top of my head, the people who rank high in his life are Hal Jordan, Roy Harper, Dinah Lance, Mia Dearden, and Connor Hawke. Hal's still his best friend, and Dinah...regardless of how you feel about it, is his canon wife right now. Connor is the son he never had a chance to know, and Mia is the girl he's bound and determined to do right by. As far as Roy goes...they've gotten over a lot of the pain and seem to have actually fallen into a true father/son vibe that is very far from the buddy pair they were in the golden age.

Other notables of his life have included Bonnie King, aka Miss Arrowette. According to a throwaway panel in a Young Justice Comic, and a lot of fanon, Cissie King-Jones (Arrowette) may be his illegitimate daughter. Bonnie was a Star City heroine captivated by the Archer. Eddie Fyres is a notable ally/antagonist of the Grell era, being a CIA spook who got Ollie in deep trouble. Repeatedly. And who then later looked over Connor closely.

Possibly the most complicated relationship to dwell on is Shado, the Yakuza bow-mistress who raped Oliver in the throes of a fever, and conceived his son, Robert. (Forgive me, but I fail to recall Robert's Japanese name, revealed in the Connor Hawke Miniseries.) Ollie is very torn by her, between attraction, fascination, and betrayal.

Other portrayals

Green Arrow in Justice League Unlimited, like most of the animated heroes, is a much more 'white hat' character. He gave up his company after the Bat invited him to the League and talked him into staying...or after he laid eyes on a Pretty Bird, at least. He's still got issues somewhere, as evidenced by Speedy's brusque comments his way in one episode's cameo, but he's got the real feel of a Knight in Shining Armor...no offense, Sir Justin.

Oliver Queen on Smallville came about after a long, losing battle to get Bruce Wayne allowed. And, no offense, Bat fans, I think the options available to Oliver Queen make more sense for him than they would have for Bruce. He's got murdered parents and a thirst for vengeance when we first meet him. He's robbing the rich (Lex's pals), and using the proceeds for justice...or in theory, anyhow. He's far more wiling to go to violent measures than Bruce is typically portrayed as willing to do. He's a CEO of his company, and he's slowly building this motley band of heroes who may one day be the Justice League....

He only enjoyed one appearance on SuperFriends, alas...

Questions? Recommended authors

I've tried to keep this brief. I'd be glad to handle questions in comments though.

If you really want good portrayals of Oliver Queen, I beg you to go look at gottaluvit123's fic. I tend to live in awe of her Oliver. greeneyelove also handles him quite nicely.

Brad Meltzer introduced the first of the retcons that really impacted the way Ollie is handled to date. He let it be written in that Oliver Queen had known about his son from the beginning. This seems to directly contradict everything Connor Hawke's creator intended (Chuck Dixon, folks...man seemed to hate Roy Harper, but gave us a great character in the form of Connor). And it made Ollie into a form of coward and heel he'd never really been depicted as.

Judd Winick finished the job begun in undermining Oliver's sense of noble character that had been semi-regained in his rebirth. Though Dinah had slapped a still pretty much amnesiac (soulless, actually, and lacking a decade of experience) Oliver with the events that destroyed them, the two had hit it off fairly well. Within the first arc Winick wrote, Oliver Queen cheated on the woman of his dreams, reducing him back to where he'd been in issue 75 of the prior series. He lost Dinah...a fact that would not be made clear for over a year's worth of publication.

And then comes Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis and One Year Later, and we've been force-fed a very abrupt reunion in that relationship, a mayorship that must have been bought, and a lot of other changes, including the coma and kidnapping of his son...who he quit looking for, supposedly, because he found a sidekick.

You might say I'm bitter, looking at that summary of the past few years of canon.

(Source)

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sleepyowlwrites · 2 years

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wip folders/titles tag (to end all tags)

briar-bush snagged by @aalinaaaaaa @talesofsorrowandofruin @mj-is-writing and @nicola-writes my goodness. it's been a little while since I did this, and I've got some new followers, so here goes. I'm doing groupings AKA scrivener docs. and I'm not gonna do this again any time soon, no matter what new ideas I get.

and other stories > Idea Box:

Rowena > Troublesome Princes, Twin Wizards, Vanishing Staircase, Sneezing Rain, Tiny Pirates, Lost Dragons, Doomed Crown, True Love's Kiss

Ghost Story > Violet, Trans-dimensional Ghosts

Spirits and Summoners

Spider Silk

City Story > dirt in the doing, gang up on crime

Death Story > The Score

Guild Story > House of Favors, House of Swords, House of Breath

Hunter Story

Apocalypse Story > Wasteland > Two Alone

Summer Story > The Summer Gallery

College Story > Previous Lives and Premonitions

old fantasy > 29 Days of October

Tumblr Shorts > remember/forget, know/don't know, greatest detective, riveting revival, villain/not villain, glow, study flirting, hell in a handbasket, the chosen one, the grave diggers, a universe of you, potions, trust?

Archive > The Illusion, ideas

Stories? > >100, you were a windshield

youth > The Ephemeral Infinite

Prewritten > scenes pt.1, scenes pt.2, supplemental scenes, episodes, chronological

Parts of the Story > The Garden, The Broken Eclipse, An Ocean of Moments, Skin Deep Spaces, Valley Under the Bridge, Mountain and Moon, Right Here, Right Now, Just Between Us, Void Inside the Soul, Kinder Lies, Abyss of Memory, The Bittersweet and Beautiful, The Dragons of Summer

Draft 02 > The Garden, from the journal

Sorting the Story > R and Mark

AUs > Spirits and Spectres

universe (space story)

first draft > anxiety story

The Beginning

The Bleed

The Encounter

The House

The Many Happenings

The Start of Class

The Weekend

The Routine

The Upset

The Anger

The Breakdown

The Storm

The Insides

The Stars

Spontaneous Scenes > ree's name, new snowboots, synopsis, meet theo, not angel ree, exist without

Name Swap > The Entire Thing

petrichor > draft

Act 1 > prologue, Meet the Fam (Kena, Kyt, One Family), Meet the Crisis (Drying, Dying, Crying), Meet the Quest (Walking, Talking, Stalking)

Act 2 > Meet the City (New People, New World, New Status), Meet the Magic (Internal, External, Paternal), Meet the Curse (Implications, Characterizations, Explanations)

Act 3 > Meet the Wizard (Choosing Sides, Switching Sides, Inside-outside), Meet the Recipe (Seeking, Speaking, Sleeping), Meet the Choices (Storms, Silence, Savior)

Burn::Freeze > name replace

Scenes > real communication, sardha is angry, a god laughs

Collections > Fandoms

The 100 > Punctuation, Sage

Shadowhunters

Avengers

Chicago P.D. > Shots

Power Rangers

ATLA

Misc.

Other Stuff > dialogue prompts, conversation prompts, setting prompts, title prompts

poetry and prose > Directory

Archive > 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017-19, 2020

Modern Collections: ellipses of thought, wwafllhdwg, walls and windows, weary and wanting, colors and creation, the kinds of being, you without me, sometimes words, what I will give you, discord, same again, deadly delights, the unknown, a palette of wonder

The Book of Lost Lyrics > love lines, lonely lines

The Book of Lost Lines > short, collectionless

free edits > ghosty's song, deathdancer

writing thoughts > character, story

sleepy subtitles library > The Library

C Dramas > The Untamed (Blood series, character study), The Lost Tomb (The Sounds in Silence, Functions of a Heart, Shorts, Living Death series)

Thai Dramas > KP (constellation), Misc.

kboys > Crossovers (gang, food & fruit, meta-portal), TXT (apocalypse, angels?), Archive Kpop

and that's it! that all the docs. I did it very thoroughly this time, covered all the wips, the parts, the ideas, the fics and the poetry. I even left a few out because they are barely ideas and I'll never write them. they're just pages with names, so they don't count. anyway. um. I don't remember who did this during the last go-round of tags. so just ignore me if you've done this recently. @mel-writes-with-her-dragons @uraniumwriting @ettawritesnstudies @viskafrer @zoya-writes @oh-no-another-idea @writing-is-a-martial-art OR ANYBODY, of course, as always

And Dreamy, who always wants to snoop on what I'm writing @writingonesdreams

#tag game #writeblr games #sleepy stuff #sleepy writing

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paullovescomics · 2 years

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Justice League Road to Dark Crisis Dark Crisis #1

I will admit that I'm nervous about another story called Crisis. There have just been too many in recent years. I usually don't like their endings. The threats are too huge and abstract, and too meta. Recombobulating the multiverse again is of zero interest to me. Thankfully, it seems that last one is off the table this time, as DC has recognized that its various "fixes" to continuity have made its continuity way more confusing that it ever was before 1986. To be honest, I would not have bought these issues if my comic shop hadn't put them in my subscription box, which led me to decide, what the hell, give them a shot.

Road to Dark Crisis consists of a series of vignettes showing various younger heroes reacting to the apparent death of the Justice League. This showcases one of the things I love about DC's world, which is its depth of history. Here we see Wally West and Wallace West, two generations of the Flash, talking about Barry Allen, the Flash of yet another era. Barry's generation is also represented by Hal Jordan. Jon Kent is here from the current age of young heroes, and so is Black Adam, who, in the real world, goes all the way back to the Golden Age of comic books, as well as dating back to the earliest historical era in the fictional world. This is something that has always drawn me to DC, from way back when I was riding my bike to the convenience store to buy comics. I love stories with deep, complex histories to dive into.

Both of these issues are about the sense of uncertainty that pervades society after the loss of the Justice League. I like that some of the characters don't believe that the JL is really dead, or that they will stay that way. It's consistent with the fact that they, like us, have seen this before, and it's also consistent with the way that people in general deal with very scary events. There are always those who will insist that faith will pull us through, and those who cope by denying that the awful thing is real. This is a good storytelling choice. It's also good for me, because I would not have connected with this story if the League's apparent death was played for pure tragedy.

Of course, the bad guys are also reacting to this uncertainty, although for them, it's an opportunity. A nice touch is that the more cult-ish villain groups like Kobra and the Hive go full "it's the end of the world" mode and make bold attacks in public. Meanwhile, more serious players are taking their time to organize more effective strikes. Yes, we've seen this kind of thing before, but it feels organic, and like the villains are being smart, which is always nice.

Jon Kent reacts to the scary new situation by putting together a new version of the Justice League. The results are iffy, as Black Adam quickly points out. We're left with the sense that, while many heroes are willing to rise to the challenge, they may not be able. This is a good spot to put them in for the start of an epic story.

I enjoyed these more than I expected. My hope for DC's multiverse is the same as it has been ever since the infinite multiverse returned: it should be a source of stories and characters, a locale where stories take place, full of interesting, different takes on DC's heroes and histories, as well as new characters and settings that we haven't seen before. It should not be relegated to the background, or used as the stakes in every big crossover event. Just tell stories about the characters living on Earth 8, and Earth 96, and Earth Z-squared. Use it as a catalyst for creativity, variety, and experimentation. It has so much potential beyond being the macguffin for a Crisis.

#dark crisis #justice league #dc comics #superheroes #comic books #comic book cover art

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ectonurites · 3 years

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heyyy can you talk about kons dating history or atleast with older women? ive seen a few posts but im not sure but thats so ://///

Ahhh yes. Kon’s dating history, I've finally now finished reading all his solo comics (and had already gone through his team books a while back) so it’s a perfect time to delve into this. I’m kinda broadening it to his love interests in general, as not all of them put an official ‘dating’ label on things, but are still worth bringing up. This is kinda long so sorry in advance about that, but I tried to be as brief as possible.

TW for pedophilia (in these specific cases discussing a 23 year old dating a 16 year old, and another woman without a specifically given age [but clearly an adult] with the same 16 year old) obviously i’m not talking about it positively here but it’s unfortunately necessary to discuss with this topic.

I consider Kon as having five primary love interests in the pre-reboot comics world, which is where most of his dating happened. The ‘criteria’ I guess i’m using to separate them from the others i’ll talk about after is a combination of ‘they interacted for a long time’ and/or ‘the relationship had a big impact on his story/him as a person’.

I’m also mainly sticking in pre-New 52 world for this because aside from the 'fake married to Lophi to protect her and her kid on Gemworld' thing in Young Justice 2019, he hasn't done much with relationships since getting officially reintroduced. Then the New 52 version of Kon was a very separate person and even so he was mainly just (sorta) involved with Cassie.

ANYWAYS the main five are:

Tana Moon - Tana was a 23 year old (as stated in Superboy #32) reporter Kon initially met during Reign of the Supermen, the story he debuted in (meaning she was one of the first people he met), who also happened to move back to Hawaii around the time he ended up there on his press tour. The two of them had an on and off relationship from basically the start of the comic until she broke up with him in Superboy #46. She briefly came back into his life in Superboy #72 after having been kidnapped by The Agenda, before being killed by Amanda Spence in Superboy #74. Kon and several others refer to her as his ‘first love’ especially after her death, which weighed very heavily on him.

Knockout/Kay - A woman we find out was originally one of the Female Furies, who works as a stripper at the 'Boom Boom Room’ in Hawaii while trying to keep a low-profile after leaving Apokolips. We don't get an exact age for her but she's very much so implied to be an adult. She hits on Kon from the moment she meets him (she also quite literally uses the term ‘jailbait’ to describe him in her first appearance in Superboy #1) and kisses him several times, insisting on working with him and training him and eventually beginning a more formal relationship with him. She kills someone and he blindly defends her thinking she couldn’t have done it, and she tries to coerce him into killing someone by promising herself to him (before killing the guy herself when Kon wouldn’t do it). The arc mainly focused on their relationship is from Superboy #22-30, but she is a presence in the comic from the start. She is arrested for the murders she committed at the end of the arc, and doesn't interact with Kon much again after as she is in a high security prison, but she is referenced multiple times.

Roxy Leech - Roxy is the daughter of Rex Leech, Kon's agent. From the moment she meets Kon, also during Reign of the Supermen like Tana, she's got a thing for him. Her age is left a bit more unclear, as some bits of dialogue indicate she is actually close to Kon's age but other things like how she applies to the police academy, something you need to be like 20 to do, indicate she's a bit older. Regardless, she’s definitely younger than Tana as she comments on her age at least once. She actively dislikes both Tana and Knockout for being interested in Kon, and confesses her feelings to him during a 'the whole world might end tonight' situation (in Superboy #33). The two of them didn't really date, but there is a period of time where Kon feels torn between Tana and Roxy. Not too long after that she ends up volunteering herself to be used in a procedure to stabilize Kon's dna after it had been torn apart by The Agenda when they cloned him, as the method to save him required someone close in age to him be used as a genetic template. From that point on they considered each other more like siblings, ending the romantic aspect of their relationship (in Superboy #41)

Serling Roquette - Serling is a 16 year old (as first stated in Superboy #57) science prodigy who works in the genetics department of Cadmus, and is the person who manages to cure Kon's condition where he'd been stuck at age 16 (a side effect from the procedure with Roxy). Initially she had a crush on Guardian, but over time grew to like Kon, she was one of the first people at Cadmus he personally tells his name ‘Kon-El’ to. They only kinda start to get together before Tana comes back and then is killed. After a situation where Roxy came back and needed help, when he and Serling try to maybe pick things up again, Kon realizes Tana’s death is still too fresh for him to get involved in anything too serious with her and he breaks it off, leaving them very tense with one another. (Superboy #82)

Wonder Girl/Cassie Sandsmark - Cassie had an interest in Kon before she even met him, more of a celebrity crush at first than anything else. They share their first kiss in Wonder Woman #153 after she had tried to change her look to impress him and he reassured her that she was already beautiful the way she is. Cassie was present for Tana's death in Superboy #74, and after that Kon is overly protective of her in a noticeable way that actively annoyed her (She points out to him that she can take care of herself a few times, like in Young Justice #29) but eventually at the end of Young Justice (in #55) he confesses feelings for her, and they share another kiss. Graduation Day bringing about the end of Young Justice as a team kinda throws a wrench in things, but early in Teen Titans Vol. 3 they begin to date more formally, and are getting pretty serious together (cough cough they uhh consummate their relationship in the Kent farm's barn in TT Annual #1) right before Kon is killed during Infinite Crisis. She takes his death very badly and joins a cult to try to bring him back, has her whole thing with Tim (who is coping equally poorly with the death... almost 100 cloning attempts babey), and befriends Kara as a surrogate Teen Kryptonian™, but eventually learns to accept what happened and move on. Then he comes back, and everything's a lot to process all over again. She had become the team leader and things were just different than they used to be. They tried to resume their relationship but eventually Kon decided to end it (Teen Titans Vol. 3 #91), because they both wanted different things at that point in their lives, but they remained friends and teammates.

So when people are talking about the ‘older women’ thing, it should be pretty clear from that list they’re talking about Tana and Knockout. Both were adult women dating a 16 year old boy, and neither situation did enough to handle it in a way that addressed it as the problem it was. Knockout’s situation did end up being seen as a bad thing by the end because of the murder parts at the very least, but the age difference didn’t come up nearly as much. With Tana a few people (Roxy, some of Tana’s coworkers, even Tana herself) did bring up the age difference as a potential problem, but they continued to stay together for a pretty long time regardless. The kicker is that she ultimately breaks up with him for being ‘immature’ after he gets stuck at age 16, when it’s like... he’s 16. You’re 23. No kidding you think he’s immature? It was just a whole mess and makes reading a lot of his solo incredibly uncomfortable.

Additionally he has a few other shorter-lived relationships/potential love interests. I’m categorizing them separately because they weren’t focused on in the same ways/for as much time as the girls I listed above:

Trixie (Superboy #94-100) - When Kon gets his own apartment in Suicide Slum, he repeatedly runs into Trixie and the rest of the Slaughterhouse Six, but Superboy inspires her to try to turn her life around. They didn’t formally date but that was definitely the direction things were starting to head towards before his apartment building blew up and he realized he needed to get away from the city where his presence was painting a target on innocent people, and so they decided to just be friends. (This was also when his solo ended, so possibly if the book hadn’t been ending they may have continued longer)

Batgirl/Cassandra Cain (Superboy #85, Batgirl #39-41) - They first met when Kon had been bugging Tim in Gotham, and had a little adventure together that resulted in Batman being PISSED because he didn’t want Cass interacting with Metas (especially not teenage boy ones that’ll flirt with her) and Kon volunteered to share her punishment so she didn’t have to do it alone. They later meet again shortly after Kon moved in with the Kents while on a cruise (and he’s her first kiss!) and afterwards she goes to Smallville to meet him. She’s actually like the first person outside the Kents we’re shown to know his new civilian name is ‘Conner Kent’. After their little attempt at a date they decide to just stay friends.

Lori Luthor (Various appearances with Kon in Adventure Comics (2009) & Superboy Vol. 5) - When Kon and Lori initially meet there’s definitely some interest and she kisses him, but it happens while he’s still dating Cassie so he makes it clear he’s unavailable. Afterwards he learns who she actually is and realizes ‘oh she’s sorta kinda my cousin on the Luthor side’ so he stops really being interested. She’s still interested because she feels like the cloning doesn’t make them really related, and they talk about it in Superboy Vol. 5 #4 after he and Cassie had broken up, but he still feels too raw from Cassie and too weirded out by the situation to have it go anywhere. Kon helps try to get Lex to cure Lori’s mom (Lex’s sister Lena), and eventually when Lex is an ass in the end he finds another way (Some Wayne money through Tim) to try to help her. Lori figures out Conner is Superboy and along with Simon and Sujan helps him to save Smallville from the Hollow Men.

Ravager/Rose Wilson (Teen Titans Vol. 3 #95-100, kinda some parts of Superboy Vol. 6 if ya squint) - This is another of those ‘they didn’t actually date but there was interest’ situations, in the very end of Teen Titans Vol. 3. A fake version of Rose had kissed Kon which was kinda the catalyst for it, where after that moment he became a bit more protective of her once the real her returned. They had a moment where Kon tried to trust her with something (Kryptonite to take him down if the situation arose) but she saw it more as him thinking she was the one ruthless enough to do it, rather than as a token of trust, and left upset. The reboot happened before this really went anywhere/got resolved though, but interestingly enough she became a bit of a support character in the New 52 version of Kon’s life, likely because of this connection they tried to do before the reboot. They never really dated there either, he just referred to her as cute a few times. New 52 Kon is a very separate person anyways, but it’s worth mentioning.

I might be forgetting a few other minor ones along the way (especially if there’s things that weren’t in his main books), and Kon (especially in the 90′s) was the kind of guy to flirt with pretty much every girl he saw, so bear that in mind. But yeah, I hope this helps!

#sam writes #this ended up like 2k words dear lord i have written So Much abt superboy in this year of 2021

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thevindicativevordan · 2 years

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Thoughts on Infinite Crisis? It seems like a story that could be reworked into a stand alone Superman story for an adaptation.

Insane as it is to say, that and Final Crisis were some of the first DC stories I ever bought?

Remember being in a Barnes & Noble and picking those two because they had Superman and Batman on the covers, and stories with those two together sounded like fun. Wasn't familiar with Johns at the time but I knew Morrison from their JLA run. Was a trip to read, trade only came with the main story itself, so right in the intro I was getting shown a bunch of past events that had my jaw drop. Wonder Woman fucking snapped a guy's neck? Superman and Batman hated each other's guts (I was just a kid so I thought of those two as best friends)? The Watchtower was destroyed? Jesus what the hell happened? Hooked me in right from the start and I read it all the way to the end. Only understood the basics of what I was reading, but Johns was really good at writing "holy fuck" moments and this story had plenty of those. Phil Jimenez's fantastic art was also a feast for the eyes, he definitely made the whole book feel epic in the way an event needs to.

Overall I was and am fond of it. Besides the meta criticism (which I didn't understand since I wasn't following DC monthly yet), this was a story where the bad guys wanted to destroy reality in order to create their idea of "perfect", which became very funny in hindsight of both the New 52 and Rebirth. Add in an entire army of supervillains, the (re)introduction of the Multiverse, loads of C-Listers getting slaughtered to showcase the stakes (something I view much more negatively now), and you have an enticing if overwhelming introduction to the wider DCU for young me who just wanted to look at the pretty pictures and see dudes rock. Rock they did with badass scenes such as Kal-L shattering the wall between dimensions, Batman leading a strike team against Brother Eye, Conner going toe-to-toe with Superboy-Prime, the Flashes dragging Prime into the Speed Force, the ending scenes where the two Supermen kick the collective asses of all the villains in Metropolis including Doomsday, and then go slug it out with Prime on Mogo after pummeling Prime through the debris of Krypton and the red sun Rao. Superman telling Prime that he'll never be Superman because he doesn't know what it means to be Superman is still one of my favorite scenes ever.

Storywise the focus is on the Trinity, but mainly on Superman. All three really get raked over the coals for how they've been fuck-ups lately: Batman for being a paranoid, arrogant asshole, Wonder Woman for completely losing sight of her mission while descending more and more into bloodthirstiness, and Superman for being impotent. Truly appreciating all of the context requires reading the lead up including Identity Crisis which I didn't do until much later after I was older. Give DC credit for this much, they did a great job building up to Infinite Crisis, build-up alone was a fun read unto itself. Sadly in the long run both Superman and Wonder Woman ended up slipping back into the same holes this story attempted to get them out of, Superman ending this incarnation being an impotent sad sack who walked across America, and Wonder Woman having a godawful event in Amazons Attack! and a JMS reboot to end her Pre-Flashpoint incarnation. Only Batman was able to really shed the last remnant of "Bat-Asshole" to become Morrison's more zen conception.

Fascinating story to look at in terms of themes considering where Johns ended up as a creator and the direction DC went in with the New 52. Infinite Crisis is a story that admonishes those who believe in some idealized perfect past where everything was better, and also admitting that you can only go so far with ultraviolence, darkness, and mass casualties. Past is never as great as you remember, but that doesn't mean we can't do better right now, that was the message I took away from the story.

Now you look back at a message like that and it's downright hypocritical, with Johns shifting over to Superboy-Prime's viewpoint when he took the reigns in DC Rebirth given how he treated Morrison's Superman reboot. Did a total 180 with If you're from here this world can't be perfect because a perfect world doesn't need a Superman to saying New 52 Superman was shit and erasing him was a way to set things right. Back then it was still arguably hypocritical considering Johns killed off vast swaths of characters during the event, which was a past storytelling crutch the event was supposedly meant to be criticizing, but it's even more so hypocritical given how he talked up "hope" as being something the Pre-Flashpoint universe had that the New 52 lost.

Load of story moments I'd love to see animated but your idea of it being a standalone Superman story is both intriguing and confusing. Of course you could do the basics of "two Supermen who have lost their worlds want to sacrifice 'our' Superman's world to get theirs back", but I can't see how you could do that without all the build-up it took to get Kal-L to give up on 'our' Earth. Infinite Crisis is like Blackest Night in that it's really the type of story you need a long-running shared universe that's been around a while to pull off. We need to see this world decline in order to sympathize with Kal-L's viewpoint, and understand why he thinks the way he does even as he's being manipulated. Otherwise he would lose a lot of empathy from the audience.

Man I still wish my fan theory of when Manhattan rebooted the DCU after Flashpoint, because Superman was outside the universe having been bottled by Brainiac, he revived Kal-L for the New 52 Superman. Very first superhero deserved a better ending than getting beaten to death by his psychotic protégé and New 52 Superman was meant to incorporate a lot of the Golden Age Superman too. Guess Johns killed that kind of Superman twice.

#superman #batman #wonder woman #dc comics #infinite crisis

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austarus · 4 years

Text

Harry Wells x Reader Crisis of Infinite Wells (Part 5 of 5)

**A/N: The picture/edit/gif does not belong to me.

*It’s finally over! This took multiple showers to get it right even if I had everything planned out and outlined. But goodness is it over. I’m possibly going to take a break for a few weeks since my summer uni work is now killing on top of medical scribe classes. Yeah, my mental health is really being pulverized this summer. Trying to learn how to drive on the highway to the city too since I’m moving to the city. But ugh, I just don’t want to do anything other than watch Tik Tok, make fics, read fics/books, and sleep ;-; Big thanks to @natsukitakama for translating all the French that happened with Sherloque and a big thanks to @mintchipcupcake for letting me know her view on neural frequencies for Harry. Thanks to @crazythoughtsandlove, @sarah-i-khel, @countlesswells, and @multiwells for supporting me. I could not have done it without you guys!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this series and went down the lane of feels. Please remember to comment and reblog, it helps us content creators so much so we can keep on creating.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Word Count: 5732

“Nn,” a tired noise left your throat. Clearing said throat, you licked your dry lips as a yawn escaped you. Instinctively, you covered your mouth with the back of your hand. You languidly moved your limbs to cuddle into a pillow even further. Your phone laid beside you on the bed in silent mode. Breathing in gently, your senses registered a certain kind of musk that usually clung to a particular person. A dull ache echoed through your body as every organ began to wake up for the day. Your eyelids remained shut as a brisk of sunlight filtered through the blinds. Everything felt so foggy, but goodness was the rest well deserved. After all, you hadn’t been sleeping well once you found out that your idea had been perfectly sane and in the works. And it did work. You blinked a few times, giving up on going back to sleep. Another yawn left you. You were still in the clothes that you had worn yesterday, locks in a tangly mess. Adjusting your body to lay on your back, your mind recognized that you were indeed not in your room or in your home. You frowned as you gazed up at the ceiling. What the hell? How did I get in Harry’s room? I thought-

“Allen, I didn’t ask for your help.”

Harry! Perking your head up at the familiar roughly-toned voice, your body drifted to the side a bit as dizziness coursed within your being since you had bolted upright on the bed. You failed to recognize how your legs had been tangled in the sheets from your deep slumber and fell off the bed when you got up with haste. The cold concrete floor greeted you mockingly in comparison to the softness of the bed you were just on. Your body further protested when it absorbed the impact. Groaning, you shuffled off the floor on wobbly legs heading out of the room on socked feet. You didn’t care if you looked like a chaotic mess or that you were in your socks. Only one thought rang in your mind as you grew close to the frustrated voices. He’s here!

“You said you needed someone to watch your back and I was the only one available.”

“Yes, watch my back from the coms, Allen. From the Labs. Not someone to speed around the entire property. It was a delicate instance that I could have handled myself! And what do you know, you triggered most of the sensors and traps set.”

“You looked like you were in a bind!”

“Help me, Barry. Save me, I can’t handle a little reconnaissance without your speedster abilities. Not.”

“How many times have I told you not to touch my stuff?”

“What are you talking about, Cisco?”

“You played with my tech again! What is it up with you Wells and tampering with my things?!”

You walked in with hurried steps right as Cisco had his outburst; the haze of sleep had left you all together when you had rounded the corner. The boys stopped when you entered the Cortex abruptly out of breath. Your eyes scanned around, head moving from side to side. But you only saw Barry and Cisco and Nash as you seemed to be frozen in place. Your heart dropped in your chest at the absence of Harry, eyes sparkling as you had casted your gaze downward. Grueling thoughts had swirled through your mind as the growing whole of doubt further widened in your chest. The voice you had heard came from Nash, not Harry. Reality had picked you up and thrown you into Central City’s lake of cold water. Harry’s not here. He’s- I- He’s not coming… Your pursed your lips, whispering a little apology for barging in on the three’s argument. Nash moved his gaze to his gloves fiddling with it when he saw the sadness flicker through your eyes. With a somber expression, turned around on the spot and collided with a very solid body with a very sturdy chest. Instantly, arms encased your being at the collision, a deep voice cut through the silence. A voice that thrilled your insides.

“I finally caught you, my love.”

Swallowing thickly, you slowly looked up to see those gentle baby blues that rested behind black-clear frames. The dark-haired man cupped your face gingerly as you gathered the strength to speak. “Harry?”

“I’m back.”

A tear trickled down from your eyes, cascading down your flushing cheek, no longer wanting to be bound within your glassy eyes. Harry softly smiled down at you with his own glimmering eyes, his thumb wiped the tear that fell, but his touch caused more to fall. A whimper escaped you as you pressed your head into his chest, sobbing quietly in relief with your arms tightly holding him. The taller man took in a breath, fighting his own tears before he placed a kiss to your forehead. Harry whispered soothing words while rubbing your back as you cried into him. These past couple of weeks had been rough for everyone, but rougher on you and him. Barry and Cisco elbowed each other that the King and Queen of the Underworld have finally reunited and of course made bets on who knows what. Nash rolled his eyes at the two. Jesse stood be the door, watching her dad and you reunite. Her dorky dad and his sweet as a button girlfriend. The young speedster had a pack of tissues at the ready with a wide smile on her face. Tilting to the side, she waved at Barry and Cisco and Nash. Jesse looked oddly at Nash, observing him eye you and her dad for a moment before turning his gaze to meet her eyes. The other Wells doppelganger nodded at her, briefly seeing all the things and qualities that Harry would ramble about regarding his daughter. Nash’s heart gripped in his chest, but truthfully there was a glimpse of happiness for you. He was learning to be content with your happiness. The boys made eye contact with Harry, who only nodded at them as they decided that it would be best to leave you and Harry and Jesse alone. Barry sped them out of the Cortex.

Pulling away, you rubbed your puffy red eyes only to see a tear fall from Harry as he watched you. His eyes ran over every detail of you as if he had been seeing you for the first time in his life. You gripped his face with both hands and pulled him close. He rested his forehead against yours as you wiped his single tear. The both of you closed your eyes and just relished in each other’s presence. Breathing gently with each other and calming any doubts the two of you had. He was here and you were in his arms. The pent-up anxiety that had been increasing since the Crisis had finally burst.

“You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Harry nodded at your stumbling voice from all the crying. “I’m not going anywhere.” The two of you collected yourselves, a lovestruck look crossing your eyes.

Jesse held a pack of tissues up to you when you and her dad had pulled away. You sheepishly smiled at the young Wells. “I decided to drop by as well, can’t miss out on the Hades and Persephone reunion.” You giggled at her while whipping your tears and blowing your nose, knowing Cisco had essentially looped her into shipping you and Harry with those names. The speedster pulled you into a huge hug, giggling with you.

“I missed you too Ms. Jesse Quick,” you gave her a squeeze. Harry couldn’t keep the smile off his face. Both his girls were with him. His daughter and the love of his life. His heart felt utterly in bliss.

“Thank you for bringing him back,” Jesse whispered, pulling away with a smile. You knew that look in her eyes, the same emotion she had held when she had initially found out what Devoe had done to Harry. How he used Harry as a guinea pig and lost himself as a result. You returned the smile, feeling Harry’s large hand find your smaller one and holding it firmly. Glancing down, you intertwined your fingers with his before looking up brightly at him. The three of you glanced at each other as a wave a serenity passed over you three before Jesse bid you farewell as she headed to the break room because of her grumbling stomach. Thanks to her increased metabolism from being a speedster she’s due for speedster protein bar that Cisco’s come up with.

Walking through the corridor, Jesse entered the break room with furrowed eyebrows as her green eyes landed on an unfamiliar person. The dark-haired Hispanic was typing away on the couch when she looked up to see the young speedster. Papers and articles were plopped beside the young adult.

“You’re Allegra, right?” Jesse quired, hands in her jacket pockets.

“Yeah, who-”

“Great, I’m Jesse Wells. You’re just the person I was looking for.” Allegra’s frown deepened but deemed that this was the Jesse Wells you had mentioned to her. Harry’s daughter. Two irreplaceable members of Team Flash. The UV meta figured that the speedster was no harm, especially since Jesse seemed to be around her own age. “We need to talk. I know this great bar we could go to.”

“Wait, what-”

Allegra wasn’t able to finish her sentence as Jesse had sped them away to a bar in a torrent of yellow-green lightning.

***

Harry had ushered you back to his room and away from prying eyes because he knew that if Cisco and Barry came around you and the scientist would not hear the end of it. Plus, as much as Harry was balanced now, he currently preferred to capture your full attention inside the bedroom rather than outside. Especially with Nash still around the labs.

The two of you found yourselves cuddling into each other on the bed. Harry’s head rested close to yours while you slipped off his glasses and kissed his nose before threading your fingers through his hair. The Wells doppelganger let out a content sigh at the simple gesture of affection, but one he deeply enjoyed, while shutting his eyes for the moment. His arms rested comfortably around your waist; your figure pressed close to his as if he was afraid you were an illusion that would escape him. He had already discarded his black jacket, leaving him just in his classic black short sleeve shirt and dark wash jeans. Reopening his baby blue eyes, Harry plucked his glasses out of your hand to twist his body over to the side and tossing them onto the counter. Turning fully to you with a lovestruck smile and half-lidded eyes, he slowly leaned in with every intention of kissing you till your lips were red and swollen.

“Wait you can’t kiss me yet!” You moved your head back slightly to which Harry frowned irritably because he’s been holding back from kissing you silly in the Cortex. … Amongst doing other shamelessly pleasurable things to show you just how much he missed you.

“Why not?”

You simply took out the vanilla bean flavored chapstick from your pocket and apply it to your lips. Harry watched you smack them a few times and wondered if you were either tempting him even more or testing his patience or both. “Now you can kiss me.” Harry had quirked an amused eyebrow at you. “What? I wanted it to be perfect. Plus, you know I bite my lips when I get too wori-” You pouted at your boyfriend, who instantly shut you up with needy kiss. Without words, the kiss showed you just how much he had missed you and that his patience was running thin.

Your brain froze for a second before responding. His lips smacked against yours before Harry pushed his tongue into your mouth, yearning for your taste. You gasped, fighting him for a bit before giving in. His fingers had crawled up under your shirt, rubbing soothing circles on the skin. Your hands had rested on his face, pulling him impossibly closer as the smooches continued to heat up. The air in the room felt as if on fire but you wouldn’t have it any other way. Nipping on his bottom lip, you kissed Harry with just enough passion as your body moved to lay on top of his. His hands retreated from under your shirt to fold themselves on your lower back. Your hips pressed down against his own, feeling every part of his body meld with yours. Ragged breathes left the both of you as you continued to make out, biting and licking and sucking at each other. Harry’s hand snuck down to smack your ass causing a yelp to fall off your lips. You pulled away for air, your lungs exhausted and your head was spinning. You were met with a cheeky smirk while you pouted at your boyfriend with a frown. He licked his lips wickedly once more before leaning up to kiss your swollen lips while you adorned a flushed expression. A sight he took great pleasure in seeing on your face. And only he can elicit that kind of reaction from you. His lips tingled delightfully from the sweet chapstick on your lips.

“When did you even get here?” You asked once you regained control of your breathing, fixing your hair to the side as the two of you laid back. Harry resting on his back while your snuggled beside him, your head pressed to his chest as you listened to his racing heartbeat. You shifted your gaze to eye him with one hand against his chiseled chest. Harry sighed, collected his thoughts before tucking a piece of stray hair behind your ear as he spoke up. His arm was firmly wrapped around you.

“Last night. Jesse and I found you asleep on Sherloque’s lap.”

“How-…What’s with look?”

“What look? I don’t have a look.” Harry spoke quickly as if he’d been caught red-handed.

“Harry, yes you do! You have a look for almost everything. Everyone does.” You teased him a bit before turning to the more serious thoughts that had kept you up. And it showed. Harry can see it clear as day on your face. You had not been sleeping well without him. He couldn’t sleep either without you. “Anyway, what took you so long?”

“I- We… When I woke up Jesse had been monitoring my vitals, keeping me hooking up to a life support system. She was crying, wouldn’t let me go and saying how she was scared to death. Scared that she lost me for a second time. Every single day she would check on my vitals and try to talk to me. Jesse wouldn’t leave my side, going over all my vitals as my consciousness fully set into my body. We had collaborated everything, but…”

“But?”

“I was feeling weak when she took me off the life support. So, she quickly synthesized a blood sample to do a blood transfusion, just like you showed her, to flush out anything that had been hiding in my body from the Crisis and the neural separation. My vitals and cells returned to normal. It worked fast; I won’t deny that. Speedster blood and everything. Once I was feeling moderately better, we tried the last session.” Harry pointed to his head with a free hand, baby blue eyes twinkling with such knowledge and intellect that was rightfully his. “I’ve got it all back. Everything.”

You grinned up at him, “I told you, if anything Jesse would be the one to figure it out.”

“My pride and joy.”

“So, what went wrong? I-I mean, why didn’t it work the first time 2 years ago.”

“Well, Jesse had profusely voiced her irritation that Marlize had done a sloppy job after she looking over the blueprints and all the notes, but Marlize had also neglected the fact that I’m from another Earth- or in this case dimension. My neural frequency is at a different interval in comparison to everyone on Earth-1. A unique signature for each Earth, if you will. That’s why I was able to retain basic functions, but not reach my full potential regarding intelligence and neuron firing. And it’s a good think the dark matter didn’t leave any neural scars or that could have been a complication since the brain doesn’t do well with regeneration.”

“Look at you talking all science-y again. It worked; Jesse fixed you.”

Harry pulled up one of your hands, kissing the knuckles. “You’re the one that figured out how to bring me back. Back to my daughter, back to you, back to my family.”

You dropped your gaze, feeling the heat rise in your cheeks from his intense and adoring gaze. A bashful smile returning to your lips as your eyes met his. “I told you so.” You pressed your lips against him in triumph. Harry hummed against your lips before you pulled away.

“You’re not going to let it go, are you?”

“Nope,” you deadpanned with a cheeky grin. “Now I can admire you while you ramble on about physics and math that I’m totally clueless to and tend to tune out just to hear your voice.”

“Wait, you don’t actually listen to me explaining things?”

“… A little.” You sheepishly responded to which Harry retaliated by running his fingers over your sides. Your fiendish sides that always betrayed you. A giggled bubbled from your throat. “Harry, don’t you-” But the scientist paid no mind to you as he continued his carefully planned assault on your sides. Snorts and little laughs flood out of your lips as cringed and attempted to move your body away from his hands. A toothy grin crossed his features at your shrieks, his fingers ran over every ticklish area on you. Flopping onto your back, Harry’s tickle attack subsided as his heart flipped many times over. He watched your chest rise and fall as your giggles gradually quieted. You gazed up at him with stars in your eyes, his own were full of adoration and love but… with a certain other emotion hidden behind us. A thought struck you.

“By the way, where’s Sherloque?”

“Babe, he left. Said he had some business to take care of on his Earth- well, dimension actually.”

“Oh, I hope everything’s ok on his end. …I heard about Renee and everything.”

“He’ll be fine. Sherloque just needs his mind to mull over a few things.”

“I hope he finds what he’s looking for…” you whispered, to which Harry oddly looked at you, wondering if you knew, before the look behind his eyes shifted. You caught onto the sudden, but subtle change.

A particular glint sparkled in Harry’s eyes as you trailed off, one that had you hypnotized. One that you knew all too well as he towered over you on the bed. Those lust-filled eyes that pulled you in like a riptide. Harry licked his lips, leaning down with half-lidded eyes. Then a pesky thought hit you causing you to push against his leaning chest which had Harry inwardly grumbling.

“Wait, Harry, I haven’t washed up!”

“I figured, I had Jesse go out and buy you a few things. Those skin care products and face wash you idolize so much. She probably set them in the bathroom already.”

“The avocado and cucumber facewash? And the hydrating facial cleansers? With the pomegranate-berry face cream?”

Harry nodded, but kept you firmly beneath him, “If you can stand to hug me after I came back from Gorilla City- after all the shit they did and threw at me, then I think I can stand being around you in the clothes you’ve worn from yesterday and unfreshened up.”

“Yeah, not your best moments.” You teased him and slithered from underneath his grasp, hopping off the bed.

“Hey!”

He watched you step into the bathroom. God, I love you. Harry went on his phone, staring at the picture you and he took on New Year’s as the water ran in the bathroom. Maybe now wouldn’t be the best time no matter how many times Jesse’s been pestering me about it. Coming back, you dove right into his side and cuddled him close with a jubilee smile on your face. Harry swears his heart melted for the 100th time that day.

“If you want to… do stuff later, we’d have to do that back at my apartment after I shower and everything,” you traced patterns with your finger over his chest. “And so, no one interrupts and…. Yeah…”

“Definitely want to ‘do stuff’ later.” You blushed at his wink and how he wiggled his eyebrows. Babe, you’re going to need to shower after that too. Leaning in Harry caught your ear between his teeth before whispering all the dirty things and positions he wants to put you in. “I’m going to make sure my name is the only thing you remember tomorrow morning, my sweet, sweet Persephone.” Covering your face, you resisted the urge to scream in frustration at this man’s level of teasing. Knowing he had impeccable patience for the nightly activities to come later. Harry knew the exact effect he had on you, how he can make your body scream in ecstasy as he’d show you just how capable he is in loving you. Blow out a puff of air, you calmed yourself and hormones. Your thirsty side would need to wait until you two went home.

“Harry?”

“Hm?” He blinked out of his thoughts and gave you a quizzical look.

“Do me a favor and flex.”

Harry blinked at you for a moment before sitting up and flexing. You won’t deny that your thirsty thoughts took over for a bit again when you reached up to run your fingers over the toned muscles. Before you could do anything else Harry’s strong arms wrapped around you as he snuggled his head into your chest. Soft. Your cheeks turned a rosy color as you felt him kiss your exposed chest from all the rolling around in bed.

“I don’t think I’m needed anywhere else today,” you mused, ruffling his chaotically messy locks. He breathed you in like a man taking a huge breath of air before diving into the depths of water.

“Perfect, because for the record, I wasn’t going to let you out of my arms all day.”

You chuckled and kissed his forehead, “Neither will I.” Shutting your eyes, the both of you slowly drifted off in each other’s embrace.

***

Sherloque sighed to himself as he stepped out of the dimensional portal into his home. The detective adjusted his coat around him. It was cold and empty again, but at least he had arrived safely again. Everything was still in place. His mind could not help, but to wander before he left you in the hands of Harry and his daughter.

(Flashback)

“Eh bien il était temps,” Sherloque remarked with a confident smirk. Harry and Jesse strolled closer to the detective with Harry rolling his eyes at him. Sherloque’s eyes landed onto Jesse, who only smiled at him politely. Jesse’s dealt with HR before so she likes to think she can handle another of her father’s doppelgangers. But she won’t lie, she’s a bit curious on what her doppelgangers are like. “You must be Jesse Quick.”

“That I am, nice to meet you…”

“Sherloque. And likewise, your father ‘as talked so much about you. ‘ave-” Her father had sent the detective a hard and threatening look, meaning that Sherloque should likely think twice before deciding to psychoanalyze and deduce Jesse. The Wells doppelganger chose his next words carefully, “-’ow was it?”

“I got it all back, minor headaches, but nothing else out of the ordinary,” Harry shrugged, knowing what Sherloque had been referring to and rubbed his temple as his eyes fell to your slumbering form. Your chest rose and fell with each relaxed breath.

“Right, well it was nice meeting you, Sherlock,” Jesse unfurled her arms, mentally plotting something vengeful.

“Sherloque, it’s French.”

“Yeah, cool, whatever,” She shrugged, not really caring before speeding off to scare Team Flash in their respective homes that she’s back. Especially Cisco and Barry, who Harry’s told her to get back at them good.

“She’s finally asleep.” Harry moves to pick you up from the couch and Sherloque’s lap. His arm hooked under your legs while the other held you around your lower back. Your head lulled into Harry’s neck, unconsciously breathing in his scent. He had already decided that a bed would be much more comfortable than a couch.

“You should zhank Nash for zhat,” Sherloque stood up, following the Harry to leave the Speed lab. The chaotically dark-haired Wells spared his counterpart a glance as a snort left his lips. “After all he’s zhe one zhat slipped a sleeping agent into ‘er drink. I called it drugging, ‘e ‘ad opposing zhoughts to zhat, as you can imagine.”

Harry remained silent, knowing he would have to thank Nash eventually for watching out for you these past couple of weeks in his absence. Especially when you had been sacrificing every moment of sleep to ensure everything had gone according to plan. Entering the familiar layout of his old room, Harry gently placed you on the bed and pulled up the thick blankets to keep you warm. Your boyfriend took a seat beside you, but across your sleeping form, leaning down to kiss the crown of your head. Sherloque smiled fondly at you and his doppelganger as he stood beside the end of the bed. Tout comme Hades et Perséphone des mythes grecs.

“Will you be sticking around? We can use all the help we can get with Bloodwork and Eva,” Harry asked, turning his head to the detective, a hand was in his lap while the other had linked his pinky with your own.

Sherloque blew a puff of air, his eyes glancing around before looking to you and Harry. He pressed his lips into a hard line before speaking up, “Actually, I must return ‘ome, zhere are… a few zhings zhat I need to take care of. Somezhing zhat your petit fleur ‘ad said to me.”

Harry raised an eyebrow but left it alone, it had been a matter between you and Sherloque. The two nodded before Sherloque used his extrapolator to leave Earth-Prime, throwing once last look to this Earth’s ironic ‘reincarnation’ of Persephone and Hades.

(End Flashback)

Sherloque only tipped his head lower before your words echoing in his already distracted mind as his feet carried him out of his home and to his Earth’s Central City’s precinct. The rain lightly cascaded down onto the city, a rough breeze howling past.

-“You deserve better. You really do, Sherloque. Love will find you.”

“Easy for you to say.” Sherloque snorted, blowing on his tea.

“Hey, head up,” You found yourself sitting beside the now cynical man as you wrapped your arms around him in a comforting hug. “It could even literally run right into you one day when you least expect it.”-

Il est facile pour vous de dire, petite fleur. Sherloque sighed. Je souhaite secrètement qu’il avait été avec vous. Quelles sont les chances que je puisse rencontrer un bel esprit comme vous dans ma dimension?Sur ma terre?

The detective was relieved that the Earth-1 Renee had had mercy on his being and not demanded money from the detective, instead wishing to go back and to never see him again. Typical, yet unlike his other ex-wives that have been milking him for any penny that he owns. Why he always chased after the same women was always a question that his mind and heart clashed with his desires on it. Sherloque’s eyes blurred slightly then refocused, he was still lost in his mind as his feet picked up the pace. His shoes tapped against the cold, wet surface of the concrete path. The taller man quickly collided with a shorter body, his chest lightly stung from the impact as he took a step back and ready to scold the other person. Sherloque’s eyes widened as he felt his world stop. Lo and behold your doppelganger had crashed right into him. The detective blinked a few times, speechless.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” You picked up his fallen hat, patting off the water that had gotten onto it from its fall into a shallow puddle. You rambled, “I can’t believe I did that. I’m such a ditz, I promise- If only I was paying more attention to where I was walking and not my phone- and honestly I can be really oblivious-”

Sherloque processed only half of the words that came out of your mouth while his mind went into its deductive phase. Your eyes were red and puffy from crying, hair knotted, possibly from rushing to work this morning. The detective faintly smelled dimethyl disulfide, ketones, toluene, and other chemical compounds that are used on cadavers. You worked with dead organisms, particularly humans. He deduced that your rumpled lab coat that stained with old blood and chemical burns and sagged shoulders from the weight of your bag. You had been fired from a research facility belonging to a medical institute. Picking up on the clues, you had been framed. A scapegoat to the recently missing human cadavers from your long nights at the labs. Long nights spent on carefully analyzing tissues and cells that have not yet degenerated. A means to collecting and keeping those samples viable for regeneration of the spine, brain, and heart. Organs that scarcely regenerate themselves after scarring or attack from autoimmune diseases.

“-What’s your name?”

“(Y/N) (L/N), I’m a biomedical scientist. I uh- sorry, I don’t know any French, I think that was it?”

“Oui, it was.”

Peut-être... L’amour n’a pas besoin d’être avec une Renée.Peut-être qu’il peut venir de quelqu’un d’autre- quelqu’un de précieux qui peut rendre la pareille à l’amour que j’aspire.Cela peut prendre soin de moi comme je le ferais pour eux. Your doppelganger stood worriedly in front of him. For some reason, the dark-haired Frenchman look vaguely familiar. Sherloque saw that there was nothing but kind intentions behind those glimmering eyes. A spark of light illuminated within your doppelganger’s eyes when yours met his. The similarities between your Earth-Prime self and the one that stood in front of him were impeccable, as were the differences… He could read your personality, little details that indicate the kind of person that you are. But he voiced none of his deductions. It was then that Sherloque had made his decision.

The tall Frenchman picked up the umbrella you had dropped from the force of the collision. He ensured that it was not broken before handing it to you. Taking his fedora, Sherloque smiled keenly at you as he gestured with his head for you to follow. “Come along, petit fleur, I require your expertise for a crucial case. Lives depend on it.”

“But I’m-”

“Currently free since you’re now out of work judging by your sullen eyes. Yet zhey twinkle wizh zhe desire for somezhing… more than the basic lab life.”

You directed your gaze back up at him with guilty, but curious eyes at his deduction. “That’s amazing, how…?”

Sherloque tilted his head at you before he held a hand out to you. For some odd reason Sherloque felt that this time would be different. Things would be different. The way you made his heart thrum warmly in his chest. C’est ce que ressentent Nash, Wolfgang et Harry? Quand vous les regardez avec ces yeux pétillants d’intellect et de générosité? “Come, our clients await.” He watched you hesitate before wordlessly setting your hand in his with curiosity filling your mind. The detective observed you as he placed a gentle kiss on your knuckles then tugged you along with him.

French Translation:

Tout comme Hades et Perséphone des mythes grecs - Just like Hades and Persephone from the Greek myths

Il est facile pour vous de dire, petite fleur - It is easy for you to say, little flower -

Je souhaite secrètement qu’il avait été avec vous. Quelles sont les chances que je puisse rencontrer un bel esprit comme vous dans ma dimension?Sur ma terre? - I secretly wish that it had been with you. What are the chances that I can meet a beautiful spirit such as you in my dimension? On my Earth?

Peut-être... L’amour n’a pas besoin d’être avec une Renée.Peut-être qu’il peut venir de quelqu’un d’autre- quelqu’un de précieux qui peut rendre la pareille à l’amour que j’aspire.Cela peut prendre soin de moi comme je le ferais pour eux. - Maybe… Love doesn’t have to be with a Renee. Maybe it can come from someone else- someone precious that can reciprocate the love that I yearn for. That can take care of me as I would for them

C’est ce que ressentent Nash, Wolfgang et Harry? Quand vous les regardez avec ces yeux pétillants d’intellect et de générosité? - Is this what Nash and Wolfgang and Harry feel? When you look up at them with those sparkling eyes of intellect and generosity?

L’amour est une chose mystérieuse. La petite fleur pour laquelle j’avais une étincelle de sentiments avant d’être aveuglée par une autre Renée... Cette fois, je serai prudent avec mon cœur.Cette fois, j’apprendrai à aimer cette petite fleur qui m’a déjà intrigué.Cette fois, je vais poursuivre le bonheur et le changement avec un autre qui n’est pas Renée.Cette fois sera différente - Love is a mysterious thing. The little flower that I had a spark of feelings for before being blinded by another Renee… This time, I will be careful with my heart. This time, I will learn how to love this little flower who has already intrigued me. This time, I will pursue happiness and change with another that is not Renee. This time will be different.

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afaimsarrowverse · 4 years

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The 35 Craziest Arrowverse Episodes

„Crazy“ is an ever changing measure, especially in the Arrowverse. When Time Travel and Parallel Universes were introduced it was a heavy leap from the norm. A couple of seasons later it was pretty much normal. So this list reflects changes in the norm, episodes that pushed the crazy and unusual. What is crazy for on show is not crazy for another one. So if you mix it you might not find it as crazy as something below it, but it is as crazy … for the show it’s featured in.

So, let’s get into it:

35. Haunted (Arrow Episode 4.5/74, Written by: Brian Ford Sullivan, Oscar Balderrama, Directed by: John Badham)

John Constantine crosses over in the Arroverse in this episode which reveals Olivers dealings with him in the past and shows him restoring Saras soul. With this episodes the show started to embrace it supernatural arc, here „Arrow“ got mystically weird.

34. Hey, World (Legends 4.16/67, Written by: Phil Klemmer, Keto Simizu, Directed by: Kevin Mock)

In the Season 4 Finale of “Legends” Nate is brought back to life by the power of love and song, Vandal Savage returns in an unusal way and we meet a dancing dragon. Good stuff indeed.

33. Mr. And Mrs. Mxyptlk (Supergirl Episode 2.13/33, Written by: Jessica Queller, Sterling Gates, Directed by: Stefan Pleszczynski)

Do not listen to the haters. This is basically the “Supergirl”-Version of the 90s Trek-Episodes with Q in it. This one is probably the most comic book-y episode “Supergirl” ever did and it’s great.

32. Welcome to Earth2/Escape from Earth2 (Flash Episodes 2.13-14/36-37, 36: Written By: Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg, Katherine Walczak, Directed By: Millicent Shelton, 37: Written By: Aaron Helbing, Todd Helbing, David Kob, Directed By: J. J. Makaro)

Like I said, we got used to multiple earths. However this two parter is the first time we ever visited one. We visit Earth-2 in this, where pretty much everything and everyone is different. We are in for a lot of surprises.

31. License to Elongate (Flash Episode 6.6/120, Written By: Thomas Pound, Jeff Hersh, Directed By: Danielle Panabaker)

This one is the „Flash“-Version of a James Bond Movie, with Barry and Ralph encountering a Bond loving villain who steals ideas and lines from movies, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

30. The Book of Resistance Chapter 4: Earth Crisis (Black Lightning 3.9/38, Written by: Lamont Magee, Directed by: Tasha Smith)

In this one „Black Lightning“ discovers the multiverse and Jennifer meets different versions of herself, which lead to the shows best episode in quite a surprising way.

29. Cause and XS (Flash Episode 5.14/106, Written By: Todd Helbing, Jeff Hersh, Directed By: Rachel Talalay)

It’s the “Flash”s time-loop episode. More dark than funny, but with a lot of deaths and an happy ending, so in the end really worth it.

28. An Un-Birthday Present (Batwoman 1.11/11, Written by: Chad Fiveash, James Stoteraux, Directed by: Mairzee Almas)

„Batwoman“ goes into the whole doppelganger business with this unusual episode, where Beth is back, which is a surprise for Kate, even more given that Alice is still running around as well.

27. Invasion! (2) (Arrow (5.8/100, Written by: Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Wendy Mericle, Directed by: James Bamford)

While the writers cleary had fun with Barry and Kara in this one, the heart lies in the dream reality, where weg et a look at a world where the Gambit never sunk.

26. Doomworld (Legends Episode 2.16/32, Written by: Ray Utarnachitt, Sarah Hernandez, Directed by: Mairzee Almas)

Alternate timelines are kind of an Arrowverse thing, but this one did not came to be through time travel but through the Legion of Doom rewriting history to their own liking. Therefore there is no cause and effect to the changes, which allowed the writers to have a lot of fun.

25. Camelot/3000 (Legends Episode 2.12/28, Written by: Anderson Mackenzie, Directed by: Antonio Negret)

From the far future to Camelot and King Arthur – this episodes travelled far and mixed those two areas up quite nice.

24. Witch Hunt (Legends Episode 4.2/53, Written by: Keto Shimizu und Matthew Maalaa, Directed by: Kevin Mock)

Here „Legends“ inserted the a singing Fairy Godmother into the era of the Salem Witch Trials. The Fairy Godmother was really not the fairytale kind, but rather an evil one, but boy, she could sing.

23. Back from the Future Part 1 (Supergirl (Episode 5.11/98, Written by: Dana Horgan, Katie Rose Rogers, Directed by: David Harewood)

An evil Winn from another earth turns up, which brings back our Winn and we get a Winn-Off, so to speak, and Winn with Clark Kent glasses so he wouldn’t be recognized.

22. Elongated Journey into the Night (Flash Episode 4.4/73, Written By: Sterling Gates und Thomas Pound, Directed By: Tom Cavanagh)

This episode introduces the main one, which was Ralph of course, who discovers his new powers in this and is not as amused about them as we are.

21. What’s Past is Prologue (The Flash Episode 5.8/100, Written By: Todd Helbing und Lauren Certo, Directed By: Tom Cavanagh)

In the 100th episode Barry and Nora time travel through the history of the show, face down the Flash greatest villains of the past while trying not to change the time line, which of course does not work out.

20. Reset (Arrow (Episode 8.6/166, Written by: Onalee Hunter Hughes und Maya Houston, Directed by: David Ramsey)

Yes it’s a time loop episode in „Arrow“! It’s probably the moment the show embraced it’s funny pages origin the most wholehearted.

19. The Virgin Gary (Legends Episode 4.1/52, Written by: Phil Klemmer und Grainee Godfree, Directed by: Gregory Smith)

John Constantine joins the Legends in the time for a murderous unicorn at Woodstock that roofies most of the team and gets Ray to snog a tree, Mick and Nate to exchange loving vows, and Zari to chase lights.

18. Helen Hunt (Legends Episode 3.6/39, Written by: Keto Shimizu und Ubah Mohamed, Directed by: David Geddes)

Helen of Troy single handedly destroys the Golden Era of Hollywood, simply by being there and driving men nuts. Studio exes try to kill each other in order to get her, while Damien Darhk becomes her agent to wreck even more havoc.

17. The Fellowship of the Spear (Legends Episode 2.15/31, Written by: Keto Shimizu, Matthew Maala, Directed by: Ben Bray)

This episode is “Legends”-Homage to Tolkien and his works. However the most quotes and nods go to the Peter Jackson Movies, which is no problem, because we love them too.

16. Starling City (Arrow (Episode 8.1/ 161, Written by: Beth Schwartz und Marx Guggenheim, Directed by: James Bamford)

We are essentially reliving the pilot with a few signifcant changes. Turns out we are actually on Earth-2 and Oliver pretends to be his doppelganger in order to do a thing for The Monitor.

15. Séance and Sensibility (Legends Episode 4.11/62, Written by: Grainne Godfree, Jackie Canino, Directed by: Alexandra La Roche)

What have Jane Austen and Bollywood in common? Both a represented in this episode that features a Bollywood number and the death of Jane Austens writing career.

14. Luck is a Lady (Flash Episode 4.3/72, Written By: Sam Chalsen und Judalina Neira, Directed By: Armen V. Kervokian)

This episode introduces Hazard, a Meta who generates Bad Luck in order to have Luck herself which creates a lot more chaos than you would think.

13. Emerald Archer (Arrow Episode7.12/ 150, Written by: Marc Guggenheim und Emilio Ortega Aldrich, Directed by: Glen Winter)

„Cops“ meets „Arrow“. This is a documentary about Team Arrow, or rather the making of the documentary about Team Arrow or rather a very special very unsusal episode.

12. The Bottle Episode (Supergirl Episode 5.10/97, Written by: Derek Simon, Directed by: Tawnia McKiernan)

We get a lot of doppelgangers, most of them Brainys, and a lot of chaos, I mean more chaos then most other shows usually have, except for „Legends“.

11. Aruba (Legends Episode 2.17/33, Written by: Phil Klemmer und Marc Guggenheim, Directed by: Rob Seidenglanz)

The Finale of Season 2 features two sets of Legends, while the team goes back and while Malcolm, Damien, and Snart are mostly confused Eobard strikes back by recruiting a lot of his former selfes.

10. The Good, the Bad and the Cuddley (Legends Episode 3.18/51, Written by: Marc Guggenheim und Phil Klemmer, Directed by: Dermott Downs)

In the Season 3 Finale we got a massive Beebo who fights a gigantic demon. The Beebo was created by a Legends Orgy and symbolizes … well love I guess.

9. Raiders of the Lost Art (Legends Episode 2.9/25, Written by: Keto Shimizu, Chris Fedak, Directed by: Dermott Downs)

This is officially the episode where „Legends“ went nuts. Oh and it’s a delicous one. George Lucas never became a filmmaker after being scared of by Malcolms and Damiens attempts to kill amnesiac Rip Hunter who thinks he is an American filmstudent, whose script is basically the plot of the shows first season of „Legends of Tomorrow.“

8. It’s a Super Life (Supergirl Episode 5.13/100, Written by: Robert Rovner, Jessica Queller, Derek Simon, Nicki Holcomb, Directed by: Jesse Warn)

The 100the episode watches videos of the show and comments on them, then inserts Kara into the past and let her change things and create alternate timelines, what ifs, so of how things would have turned out if she had made different choices.

7. Beebo the God of War (Legends Episode 3.9/42, Written by: Grainne Goodfree und James Eagan, Directed by: Kevin Mock)

Mostly it’s the episode about Beebo Day. You know, the blue god, who hungers for war and conquest? Whose birthday we celebrate once a year in december and … wait? What was I talking about?

6. Crisis on Infinite Earths Part 1-5 (Supergirl, Batwoman, Flash, Arrow, Legends, Part 1: Supergirl Episode 5.9/96, Written by: Robert Rovner, Marc Guggenheim, Derek Simon, Jay Faerber, Directed by: Jesse Warn, Part 2: Batwoman Episode 1.9/9, Written by: Din Whitehead, Holly Henderson, Directed by: Laura Belsey, Part 3: The Flash Episode 6.9/123, Written By: Lauren Certo, Sterling Gates, Eric Wallace, Directed By: David McWhirter, Part 4: Arrow: Episode 8.8/168, Written by: Marv Wolfman, Marc Guggenheim; Directed by: Glen Winter, Part 5: Legends of Tomorrow Episode 5.0/68, Written by: Keto Shimizu, Ubah Mohamed, Directed by: Gregory Smith)

In the biggest and craziest Crossover in the history of television the multiverse is destroyed and rebuilt, Oliver Queen dies, we meet an evil Batman and we get a Supermen Team Up, among many other things.

5. Legends of To-Meow-Meow (Legends Episode 4.8/59, Written by: James Eagan und Ray Utarnachitt, Directed by: Ben Bray)

Sulky about missing out on the Crossover the Legends crossovered with themselves in Season 4. John and Charlie destroyed the timeline for selfish reasons, and now everything is wrong and everything they do makes things worse instead of better.

4. Meet the Legends (Legends Episode 5.1/69, Written by: Grainne Godfree, James Eagan, Directed by: Kevin Mock)

This episode is the documentary and the making oft he documentary. Think Arrows „Emerald Archer“ only way carzier and funnier.

3. Duet (Flash Episode 3.17/63, Written By: Aaron Helbing, Todd Helbing, Greg Berlani, Andrew Kreisberg, Directed By: Dermott Daniels Downs)

It’s the Musical Episode! The „Supergirl“-Crossover has all the jazz – singing, dancing, kissing, opening up about feelings – and also a mini „Glee“-Reunion.

2. Elseworlds Part 1-3 (Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, Part 1: The Flash Episode 5.9/101, Written By: Eric Wallace und Sam Chalsen, Directed By: Kevin Tancharoen und Tom Cavanagh, Part 2: Arrow Episode 7.9/147, Written by: Marc Guggenheim und Caroline Dries, Directed by: James Bamford, Part 3: Supergirl Episode 4.9/74, Written by: Mac Guggenheim, Derek Simon und Rob Rovner, Directed by: Jesse Warn)

In this Crossover Oliver und Barry switch identities which no one on Earth-1 believes, but Kara’s help leads to an evil not-quite Superman and a brand new reality.

1. The One Where we‘re Trapped on TV (Legends Episode 5.13/81, Written by: Grainne Godfree, James Eagan, Directed by: Marc Guggenheim)

And the award for the Craziest TV Episode of all time goes to this one, where the Legends are trapped on TV. We get very familiar but strange versions of „Friends“, „Downtown Abbey,“ and „Star Trek“ with the Legends as the main characters instead.

#Arrowverse #Arrow #The Flash #Supergirl #legends of tomorrow #Batwoman #Black Lightning #Craziest Episodes #favorite episodes

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ufonaut · 3 years

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i cannot stop thinking about the book of fate #12 and how its one of the most beautiful & compelling endings to any series ever, as much as its tremendously bittersweet. theres something to be said about stories where the protagonist ends up worse off than he started out and that’s definitely the case with jared stevens in #12 but what’s particularly poignant here is that not a single person cares, not in a meta sense but as in the universe literally canonically turns its back on him

and that feels immense in a way i still can’t quite express because jared is a nobody from inner city boston who lives above a porn theatre in an apartment with boarded up windows and who ends up being chosen as the fate of perfect balance (the only one! in history!). his reward for saving the world though? wanted for murder and exiled, complete with the added bonus of the justice league releasing a statement that theyre looking to apprehend him. that’s how he ends up on a week-long bender with lobo, having lost any semblance of life he mightve had

THAT’S IT. THERE’S NOWHERE TO GO.

that being said, the subtextual class dynamics that lie at the heart of the book of fate are what make this infinitely amazing. jared’s often written off as an edgy nineties take on the dr fate we’re all familiar with but what that outlook fails to understand is that he’s not only one of the very very very few heroes to be depicted consistently as poor and actually stay that way (if not, as stated above, actually get Significantly Worse) but he also cannot be separated from his social class because it informs every part of what makes him himself

it’s in the way his dialogue is written

in the way he lives

in the way he understands & interacts with the world

by the finale, the crisis that is jared’s literal fate reaches its breaking point and yet no one ever reaches out to help, he’s never met with anything but hatred from supposed allies of the old dr fate. the inherent implication is always the fact that he’s Not Like Other Heroes as the cause, that his life experience is incompatible with that of the mainstream superheroes. it’s not enough that jared saves the world because the issue will always be that he didnt save the world Their Way. the justice league way. he didn’t save the world like someone who could afford to be noble & kind would have

(there’s also, of course, the fact that hes ostensibly visibly Not Straight, of course. few supposedly straight guys wear rings, earrings, an extremely obvious necklace and heeled boots every single day)

(please look at his boots)

all of the themes & motifs in the book of fate combined with its comedic elements really do make it one of the best series imaginable and though its ending might be called abrupt, it makes for a perfectly emotionally satisfying experience & commentary where jared remains trapped by societal expectations. it’s a real shame not many people see the potential there is in a character like him

#jared stevens #the book of fate #book of fate #dr fate #doctor fate #fate #dc #dc comics #u can reblog #I LOVE HIM MORE THAN ANYTHING

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hellyeahheroes · 4 years

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Justice League #39 ends Snyder’s run on the series with villains winning - in final moment Justice League makes their case to humanity to stand with them against Perpetua and Luthor...and humanity rejects them. The bad guys win and seemingly destroy the League while sending everyone else back in place as if the whole final battle didn’t happen. However, the Quintessence - Spectre, Wizard Shazam, Highfather, Hera, Ganhet and Phantom Stranger - saves the League and explains that they could never win because evil has crept on too many fronts, the hope of people being weakened not just by Perpetua but by all the grim and dark events unfolding simultaneously, like Leviathan’s rise to power, all supervillain attacks of Year of the Villain, the Infected and even Doomsday Clock....somehow, while the book seems to imply this is out of the continuity. All these crises made people give up on what heroes stand for. The story basically said that things become too grim and gritty and it is our, the readers, fault for getting hyped about stories like....Bizarro stealing a time machine and Young Justice travelling the Multiverse.

Here is the thing that made me think. I saw people on twitter pointing out how dishonest this comes out when you consider who is publishing these books. This isn’t the first time DC did this song and dance where they make a meta book or an event bemoaning how comic books have become too dark and cynical, while simultaneously making everything be dark and cynical. And they always promise to bring back optimism and hope only to immediately go back to being dark and cynical. Infinite Crisis did it, Final Crisis did it, Blackest Night and Brightest Day both did it, Flashpoint did it, DC You did it, DC Rebirth did it. DC is Lucy with a football and fans are Charlie Brown constantly falling for the same trick over and over again.

As someone pointed out, it is especially hypocritical coming from the very people who spent the last two years making Batman Who Laughs a thing. To paraphrase, Scott Snyder and Dan DiDio tell you it is your fault Perpetua won because you read all these dark stories and then ask you to not forget to download Batman Who Laughs skin in Mortal Kombat 11 and play his missions in DC Universe Online. They tell you how you should feel bad for liking dark stories when DC and Warner tried desperately to make Zack Snyder defining voice of their movies, giving us outright depressing Man of Steel, Batman vs Superman and Justice League or horribly edgy Suicide Squad. And when Wonder Woman, Shazam! and Aquaman proved to them this is now what the audience wants they instead made fucking Joker movie to prove they were right all along.

In light of that Deadpool: the End, where Wade takes time to diss Batman Who Laughs, Joker movie, superhero deconstructions, and nihilistic stories, couldn’t come out at a better time that the very same day as Justice League #39. I’m not saying Marvel isn’t guilty of many of these same issues but at least here it’s said by a character who isn’t constantly being put in the center of the very stories he is complaining about and it’s said by Joe Kelly - a writer more associated with making him funny than with making him sad.

- Admin

#Deadpool: the End #marvel #justice league #Young Justice #Event Leviathan #Doomsday Clock #Year of the Villain #DC

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des-shinta · 3 years

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From what I've read about the latest Kikai Sentai Zenkaiger special, it's supposedly another one of Shinichiro Shirakura's meta-narratives, assuming he's involved with it as he's the producer of Zenkaiger. Do you have any idea why Shirakira loves doing stuff like this, like with the Taisen movies and Amazons?

From just my long observations on the matter and all of his presented conduct... I believe it to be an “I know what’s best, better than anyone else” attitude that leads him to attacking fans and what people Like INSIDE the stories of the content he produces; generally because what he is behind doing ends up so widely (or in retrospect) Loathed by both his target audience and the various peripheral demographics of these series...not helped by him insisting on doing minor variations on the same damn thing over and over again because Shirakura believes that fans have the memories of Goldfish due to him buying into the “TV shows only have a lifespan of around 150 episodes” Myth. I.E. the 3-conseuctive-years-or-7-western-seasons-year Rule that has long been disproven. No joke on that, he’s cited it on numerous occasions. Even those who claim to like them generally do for either the wrong reasons, in ignorance of what the content was contextually doing, or in hope that the repeat will be better...when it usually ends up worse. Which all is consistent with why the man became a producer in the first place by his own words; he hated what he himself was seeing being made that actually WAS Seeing success, and believed he could do it better. He has not, to the point that literally anyone else using media he’s responsible for has done better with it. Case in point there, how I pointed out how MMPR season 1 lost or ironed out a grand majority of the failings of Zyuranger, (even though by PR standards MMPR season 1 is only not a bad season Solely because no-one state-side had done a show like it before, and every season that aped it in the Samurai-onwards period has done WORSE than it, thus all the legit bad slots have been taken up). It breeds a sense of “he hates what other people liked, so will ruin it to force people to see it like HE DOES”, without any self-awareness that assassinating the characters of others for the glorification of his own characters as we have seen time and again from him...leads people to not turn against the people and stories we liked...but on him and his characters that caused this assassination instead. To use an American media analogy, one of the best Short-term comics storylines was a weekly DC comic book called “52″ (If you’ve watched Linkara’s “Atop the fourth wall” series, you may know where I’m going with this.) the comic line was a spinoff from the event “Infinite Crisis”, filling in a series of events that occurred during a DC-universe-wide Timeskip, that was told from the points of view of minor characters living with the fallout of the IC event. DC Editor-in-chief Dan Didio purportedly hated 52, and in a leadup to DC’s next major event “Final Crisis” commissioned the Event Miniseries “countdown to Final Crisis”, mandated it’s story direction with no understanding of the event it lead into with no collaboration with Final Crisis’ writer (meaning all of its events end up being 100% noncanon to EVERYTHING)...and put a bunch of people who had no reason to be part of writing such an event or utilizing the characters they were TOLD to use even if they were in no way familiar with how they SHOULD act. “Countdown” is what Dan Didio considers to be “52 Done Right”...and it is also widely known as one of the worst Comics series Ever made. Didio never really got over that, thus leading to, when DC Rebooted its canon in the early 2010′s, to use the branding “The NEW 52″, resulting in the moniker being forever tarnished as TN52 stuff is, once more, widely regarded as Garbage. Once more, see your preferred comics youtuber for a larger biopsy on that mess, most of my western comics knowledge has largely come from information Osmosis from Comics youtubers like Linkara and Brian “last angry Geek” Heinz (met both in person several times, they’re very nice), or from my Roommate John who’s a huge comics fan that has recently burned bridges with DC over stuff like “Heroes in Crisis”. But back on point, a lot of this also used in many ways to destroy the old with it’s return/update in favor of The New. You know that Last Jedi “Let the past die, Kill if if you have to” Line that became the byline for the Star Wars Sequels? That seems to be what he does *with Sincerity*, claiming with words to respect the past, but *in his presented actions* not caring how it’s depicted at all because he seems to have no respect for other’s past work (even seemingly ones that would seem like his own in some cases) if it’s for the purpose of glorifying what He himself is responsible for. Case’s in point in that being how Tsukasa was recently Murdered in the rider time specials by being curbstomped by an Ohma Zi-O that by his mere presence Tsukasa should have been Depowering as Tsukasa has the ability to disable ridewatch-derived powers due to his Rider cards, how Zi-O’s head writer flat-out admitted that on Shirakura’s suggestion he only watched the Rider’s film entries to have any knowledge of the franchise depsite continuity in many of them being AU, inconsistent, or not dealing at all with the larger more-focused thrusts of the story that made depiction of most of them wrong and then played writing the rest of...everything by ear and no internal consistency... and going back to the Taisen films...how the awful depiction of the Showa riders actually destroyed their marketability entirely. And I’m not kidding on that, while Showa Rider legend merch wasn’t a great seller, we have hard numbers evidence reported by the Tokusatsu Network that After Kamen Rider Taisen turned them into Villains in it’s story...the entire market for Showa Rider merch Died. It’s why you don’t see any past the Drive Signal bikes, no-one wanted them anymore, Bandai couldn’t get them or most of the Showa Rider lockseeds to sell; there was that steep a dropoff in interest. It’s not helped by who he picks out to do these are generally writers that are not very good on their own or are pliable to the desires of the producer they’re working with. And in Zenkaiger’s case...well, Junko Komura as a head writer has come to have a trackrecord of screwing over characters people otherwise like in favor of those people don’t, which puts her right in his wheelhouse. So yeah, TLDR? HE does it because he thinks his stuff is better, and anyone that disagrees is an enemy of and IN the content he makes.

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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Big Jason stans on twitter have been talking about a character named Eddie Bloomberg being Jason's friend, and since you know more about older comics than most I was wondering if you had any thoughts about it.

Eddie Bloomberg is a character known as Kid Devil, the sidekick of relatively low-profile mystical/supernatural hero known as Blue Devil. Though ironically, for a large part of both characters’ existence, their personas were only thematic and they had no actual mystical/supernatural powers or connection - those were added to both characters in later years. Originally, Blue Devil was a stuntman who just designed his own devil-themed costume to fight crime because like, why not, basically. LOL. And Eddie was basically a fanboy who snuck into his workshop and designed his own Red Devil/Kid Devil costume/armor along similar lines. Years later, long after Jason’s death and return and completely unrelated to it, Eddie made a literal deal with a devil, aka Neron, to get actual powers. And this resulted in him gaining a demonic appearance and related powers.....though later on it was also revealed that his powers weren’t actually given to him by Neron, rather he’d had a dormant metahuman gene all along that Neron just activated and kinda tweaked to make the resulting powers seem supernatural/occult related.

Eddie’s a fun character and there is actual canon basis for him and Jason being friends, going way back, and so I vastly prefer people going with him as Jason’s BFF over say, Roy......like, back in the day, Jason and Eddie were literal pen pals. And I do mean literal. Like we’re talking pre-email days, old school letter writing back and forth pen pals. We saw very little of their actual friendship, but like I’m always talking about with the relative lack of interactions between Dick and Jason back then....this isn’t truly indicative of anything other than a lack of places to SHOW these relationships.

There were waaaaay fewer titles back then, there was no solo Robin title to show what Jason was up to when he wasn’t with Bruce, and thus the only instance I can ever think of when we actually saw Jason and Eddie teaming up together, actually happened in one issue of the Blue Devil comic book from way back when. But again - purely logistical. Doesn’t mean they weren’t actually good friends, and there’s really nothing standing in the way of assuming they had a ton more interactions just like that but offscreen, as it were.

Also, this limited interaction took place BEFORE Jason was retconned to have his street kid origin, but that doesn’t actually mean Jason and Eddie’s friendship was ever retconned at all.

See, it was actually pretty confusing, but while post Crisis on Infinite Earths, Jason’s origin was definitively the one where he was jacking the Batmobile’s tires, and then after this point only spanned less than twenty issues before his death in ADITF......this doesn’t mean that Jason’s tenure as Robin was ever limited to JUST the events of those twenty or so issues. When they retconned his origin, they did it in such a way as to allow for pretty much every single story Jason had already been in PRIOR to that....to still have happened. Literally the only stories of his that were ever ACTUALLY retconned were the ones that pertained directly to his pre-Crisis origin as another circus kid like Dick.

Basically, the way they pulled this off was via the usage of one single caption box. At the start of the issue where Dick and Jason ‘meet for the first time,’ post-Crime Alley retcon. That issue, which is basically right at the start of Jason’s ‘new’ run as a street kid turned Robin, opens with the caption box “One year ago.” By doing this, they basically just inserted that new origin for Jason as one book-end to his time as Robin....with ADITF twenty or so issues later being the other book-end to his time as Robin obviously.

But IN BETWEEN those book-ends was contained not JUST the twenty issues between them.....but ALSO, every Jason-as-Robin story from pre-Crisis, except for his actual pre-Crisis origin story. The proof of this lies in the fact that even long after ADITF, hell, even after Jason’s return as the Red Hood.....canon kept citing specific stories of Jason’s from pre-Crisis. Like when he fought Tim at Titans’ Tower and he mentioned having briefly been a Titan...that was a definitive reference to the pre-Crisis stories where he teamed up with the Titans, once with the Fab Five in Dick’s place, and then again not longer after, to help the Titans rescue Dick and Raven from the Church of Blood. Those are the literal only two stories where Jason was ever a Titan or associated with them, and they’re squarely smack in the pre-Crisis era......but they remained canon even after Jason’s origin was retconned, because THEY weren’t retconned with that origin....they were just kinda...shuffled around a bit.

Same thing with Jason and Eddie. Even after Crisis and the Crime Alley retcon for Jason, they still were definitely friends during his time as Robin, though this never actually came up in any of the issues between Jason’s new origin and ADITF. But it was referenced once or twice since then, by Eddie I believe, so again, like the missions Jason made with the Titans and the times Dick and Jason did hang out and get along, etc, etc....these things were always definitively part of canon and were never once actually retconned before the New 52 Reboot as a whole.

So yeah, its true, Eddie was Jason’s friend and there’s canon basis for that. I’m gonna be totally honest here, my main gripe with the Jason and Eddie BFF connection is purely petty - it bugs me slightly, Jason stans’ awareness of it at all, because although it was there, we’re talking a time literally concurrent with the stories where, y’know, Dick fluffed Jason’s hair and told him if Bruce gives him any grief about sneaking out to go help the Titans rescue him, just ‘let the old man know it took you and all the Titans to pull my butt out of the fire,” and was happy to take the fall to keep Jason out of trouble. So the fact that people could remember all along something as obscure as a friendship with a character as low-profile as Kid Devil, that only appeared in all of four pages in all of comic-dom, but still loudly insisted not that they just preferred writing takes where Dick didn’t like Jason back then but rather that these were the only takes that existed in the comics.....it makes me go mmmm, shenanigans! And sadly sours me a little on the Jason - Eddie friendship just by extension. *Shrugs* Hey I’m not proud of it, lol, but ngl, that’s basically the big reason I don’t engage with it much.

I mean, the other reasons are simply that Eddie’s not super in my wheelhouse, y’know? The original Blue Devil comic was just never one I was really all that familiar with, I think I just read the one issue that Jason showed up in BECAUSE he showed up in it, lol, and although fun, Eddie never really grabbed me outside of that connection with Jason. Nothing wrong with him, just so many characters, so little time, kinda thing. And then he was in comic book Limbo unused for a loooong time, until brought back to prominence by Geoff Johns, who I’m just not really a big fan of. So he’s mostly just never really been present in the books I actually read and know really well, and so although I’m ALL for giving Jason his own friends and not just shoehorning him into his older brother’s dynamics with other characters more commonly associated with Dick.....I tend to default to doing that with characters who I’m already a fan of in their own right.

Like, my personal preferred BFF for Jason is Grant Emerson aka Damage. Because for a period in the nineties, Roy really took him under his wing and was a surrogate big brother and even guardian figure for Grant, and they had suuuuuch a great relationship, and in a lot of ways it mirrored the relationship I remembered seeing hints of between Dick and Jason and wanting more of for them, so it just makes a natural parallel. Roy and Dick as BFFs and then Grant and Jason as BFFs and with somewhat similar relationships with the older two. Plus, Grant has a lot in common with Jason, such as an abusive childhood and surprise revelations/upheavals regarding his parents that have massively affected his life. Grant is a big old softie, and not nearly as abrasive as Jason often is written as, but when paired with how much else they have in common, to me this creates a natural dynamic wherein Jason likely WOULDN’T be that abrasive with Grant, especially not when its just the two of them, because so much of that behavior for Jason is a defense mechanism and shield against being seen/viewed in ways Jason is not down with, but would never be an issue with Grant, because like....they’d both know where the other stood there and where they were coming from, and thus if Jason were going to just completely let his walls down with someone in just a totally casual way, IMO it’d be with someone like Grant. And Grant in turn I think could really benefit from having a friend he can relate to like Jason, who happens to be very confident about like....validating a lot of his own personal struggles which mirror a lot of Grant’s personal struggles where he really COULD use more validation, particularly of the external kind.

Course, I mean plus, Jason’s still Jason so also there’s the factor that Grant’s meta power is literally to blow things up with his brain, and I refuse to accept any characterization of Jason wherein he learns hey there’s this dude who can blow shit up with his brain and DOESN’T immediately follow that thought with “I must hunt him down and make him my best friend AT ONCE for clearly we are soulmates and this is DESTINY.”

(On a similar note, the other third of my preferred trio for Jason is Courtney Mason aka Anima. Like, if I were creating a Red Hood and the Outlaws style team/book from the ground up, I would hands down go with Jason, Grant and Courtney. A brief summation of Courtney from wikipedia:

“Rebellious teenage runaway Courtney Mason acquired her miraculous powers following an attack by parasitic aliens: one of many New Blood superbeings created in this way, as part of the Bloodlines crossover. Seven extraterrestrial predators had come to Earth and slaughtered thousands of humans by feeding on their spinal fluids. On the run in New Orleans, Courtney was kidnapped by a cult that sacrificed her to two of these insatiable parasites, knows as Pritor and Lissik. But Courtney did not die. Instead, the parasites' bites unleashed the Animus, a sentient-energy creature that can absorb the spirit essences of the living and the dead, which was now able to enter the world through Courtney. She became the embodiment of mankind's rage and masculine drive, and quickly developed awesome physical powers of her own. As Anima, Courtney sought revenge against the cult. She also met the Teen Titans and battled a variety of supernatural menaces. Anima remains a wanderer, traveling from place to place and helping those in need by calling upon the fearsome primal force inside her.”

Like, I’m just saying. The Jason and Courtney BFF show basically writes itself. Also, Courtney’s got her own share of sibling issues given that her little brother Jeremy eventually ends up becoming the host for the Animus entity’s ‘little sister’ Eris, the spirit of strife, so.....dot dot dot.)

But yeah, anyway, Eddie is still very much a fun character worth looking into, and his friendship with Jason pre-New 52, at least back during Jason’s Robin days, is very much a thing, even if we never got to see all that much of it.

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aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Did WandaVision Explain the MCU’s Previous Recasts?

https://ift.tt/3aWWHUG

This article contains WANDAVISION spoilers.

“She recast Pietro?!”

The vexing vicissitudes of WandaVision accomplished what was once unthinkable in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when Wanda’s long-deceased twin brother, Pietro Maximoff a.k.a. Quicksilver, appeared on her pseudo-sitcom doorstep with a franchise-altering twist, since it was Evan Peters’s quirky version of the speedster—from Fox’s X-Men movies—in lieu of the homegrown version played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Thusly, with one whooshing streak, the MCU might have installed the missing mutant half of its comic book ties. Yet, the change came with a plot-based explanation passable enough to make one wonder if it canonizes the MCU’s previous casting swaps.

While the implications that could result from Fox-grown X-Men characters getting grandfathered into the Marvel Studios-produced MCU are potent (and Deadpool-prominent), the understated narrative here is that the scene in question from WandaVision Episode 5, “On a Very Special Episode,” provided a monumentally meta moment from Kat Dennings’s Darcy Lewis, who blurted outloud the aforementioned question that we as the audience—who are watching the show’s SWORD audience watch the show within a show—were all asking ourselves about the recasting of Pietro. In doing so, she provided the MCU the first canonical acknowledgement of one of its recastings; a moment that could bear implications—of a retroactive variety—it is own right.

Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff, who first made impact in the MCU—by way of an introduction in Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s mid-credits teaser a year earlier—in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, was introduced alongside twin brother Pietro as young Sokovian HYDRA operatives who were manipulated into being experimented on by Wolfgang von Strucker with Loki’s scepter—specifically the Mind Stone it housed—which bestowed Wanda telekinesis and telepathic manipulation and Pietro super-speed. That backstory, however, was a workaround from the pre-Disney-acquisition movie rights to their traditional status as mutants who debuted in the pages of X-Men, a Marvel property whose film rights were held by Fox in a dynamic that limited how the MCU could portray those characters, and even forbade usage of the very term, “mutant.”

Marvel Studios

Therein lies the surreal nature of Pietro’s arrival on the series, since Peters’ version is not only a member of the heretofore MCU-forbidden species, but is—as he learned in 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse—the son of an intrinsically-X-men character in Magneto. Yet, we’re still not quite privy to the nature of Wanda’s bizarre sitcom fiefdom, only with a vague scientific explanation that she’s controlling CMBR (Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation) to manipulate reality within the confines of the Westview anomaly. Thus, while this newcomer clearly looks like the Pietro from the Fox movies, his new existence—akin to rapidly-growing twin sons Tommy and Billy—connects to this proverbial matrix.

Yet, Wanda didn’t simply conjure the Pietro she knew (Taylor-Johnson’s Age of Ultron version), and was genuinely surprised by him, which seems to indicate that she’s losing control of the phenomenon, and may have unwittingly yanked X-Men Pietro from the multiverse, a concept that could figure prominently when she appears in upcoming movie sequel Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Moreover, the fact that Darcy—who was monitoring the scene from outside the anomaly—actually understood that this wasn’t MCU Pietro might just indicate that the reality-altering effects of the event are being contained within Westview… at least for now.

WandaVision: The Endgame Is In Sight

By Don Kaye

Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 5: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

By Mike Cecchini and 3 others

Consequently, by the time WandaVision reaches the inevitable moment in which Westview—Wanda’s reverse Faraday cage of sorts—collapses, the barrier containing her hex-powered quantum alterations would, theoretically, no longer protect the outside world from its distributive effects on the timeline. Thus, in a manner akin to Marvel Comics’ House of M storyline, Wanda could not only end up reshaping the reality of the present, but the past as well; an event that could (emphasis on “could,”) eventually be used to canonically reconcile the various aesthetically unpleasing inconsistencies we’ve seen across the MCU, most notably the instances in which major characters were recast. As we saw with DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths (both the comic storyline and the CW television event), changes to the ever-fragile timeline often leads to the creation of people who, for all intents and purposes, are the same person, but are physically different, perhaps due to timeline variables connected to their conception. Therefore, (just as the title indicates), this initially-unassuming Disney+ television vehicle might just end up providing an invaluable plot-driven explanation for the MCU’s recastings!

Of course, the conventional industry move of recasting characters—a practice long-associated with sitcoms and soap operas—is hardly a new concept to the MCU, and even goes back to 2008 launcher Iron Man, in which Terrence Howard played James Rhodes (complete with an auspicious War Machine teaser moment), until the specter of studio politics and star-power-centric wage disputes led to an acrimonious exit. He was abruptly recast for 2010’s Iron Man 2 with Don Cheadle, who has been fielding the part ever since across the MCU’s lucratively groundbreaking moments, and will apparently do so again with an appearance on March-scheduled series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Moreover, the MCU’s 2008 sophomore effort, The Incredible Hulk, saw its A-list headliner, Edward Norton, recast with Mark Ruffalo for 2012 megamovie The Avengers, and, like Cheadle, he has reaped the wanton benefits with successful reprisals ever since.

Marvel Studios

Hugo Weaving also put in a spectacular villain performance as the Red Skull in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, but eventually soured on Marvel, leading to an uncannily evocative Red Skull performance by Ross Marquand in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War. The list goes on with the original Thor’s Fandral, Josh Dallas, who would be recast in the 2013 sequel by (eventual Shazam star) Zachary Levi, and—in a recent development—Emma Fuhrmann saw her Avengers: Endgame role as a teenage Cassie Lang (minor as it may have been,) slip away, with Kathryn Newton having been cast as Cassie for 2022-scheduled sequel Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. One could even point to the MCU’s ultimate big bad, Thanos, as a tangential example, since he was first played by Damion Poitier (sans lines), seen in The Avengers’ mid-credits scene, only to have Josh Brolin take over the role two years later, starting with the mid-credits scene of 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which yielded iconic results in subsequent MCU efforts.

Accordingly, while the reality-altered WandaVision originally seemed like a bizarre, artfully-indulgent way to launch Phase Four of the MCU, it might just end up being the perfect vehicle to not only neatly reconcile the canonical contradictions that have existed (the recastings), but also handle the array of unfathomable game-changers on the horizon now that the X-Men (and Fantastic Four) side of the Marvel Comics mythos is on a collision course with the once-insular 13-year-old Marvel Studios multimedia franchise.

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WandaVision, which is now past the halfway mark of its 9-episode run, continues premiering new episodes Fridays on Disney+.

The post Did WandaVision Explain the MCU’s Previous Recasts? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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