Flash season 2
Sep. 22nd, 2016 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethJust got all the way to the end of Flash season 2.
... I can tell where my fannish attention is focused, I immediately started figuring out how this would effect Mick and Len...
I'm not keen on how the Flash has been doing alternate Earths. Like, mostly there's no cause and effect, there's just different characters played by the same actors. That's not very interesting.
If their point was that sometimes people just choose to be their worst selves, that bad things can happen and people still choose good, then that kind of works.
Mostly I'm... not entirely interested in any of these characters.
That's partly because at the end of season 1 there should have been wild consequences and repercussions, and instead they just invented yet another magic for why there wasn't. So this season was all mucking around with time remnants, to explain why nothing changed at the end of the first season. And if they're not going to do consequences, why bother thinking?
So I don't have much to say about that entire season. The bits that felt like setup for Legends of Tomorrow were kind of interesting but weirdly disconnected. Everything being Zoom all the time was annoying. And a world that sets up repeatedly that it's a bad idea to trust anyone is just... blergh. Also the non-origin stories of familiar names gets tired too. Give us the shiny or don't, stop messing around making us jump at name recognition.
Jay Garrick turned out potentially interesting, though.
But then Barry hit the reset button on his entire life.
And apparently we get to see how that turned out in a couple weeks, if 'we' have the relevant TV channels, which, as far as I know, no. In the UK it's 25th October on Sky1, if I googled right. I'm not getting satellite just because I'm actively fannish about something for the first time in ages. Especially since the something is Legends of Tomorrow and not actually Flash, and that lacks specific air date in the UK that I found.
Buuuuuut... I'm thinking I have way more than a couple weeks worth of speculation fodder.
I mean, they just yanked out everything causal to the Flash, as we've seen it. Nobody will be the same.
And we don't know how time travel will work. If I was doing fic then I'd have Barry get 'back' to the future and find there's already a perfectly happy Barry living the life Barry wanted for himself, so all the Flash has left is being the Flash. Like, that's a logical consequence, seeing as the time traveller Barry is the time remnant now. He is an effect without causes. Paradoxical. There's logically no younger Barry leaving to do time travel, it shouldn't be like last time when he just mildly borked his own timeline but still was the person that could do travel come the day. He should get back and find a timeline that knows nothing of the Flash and a Barry Allen having his own life.
Doubt they'll do that, the long term potential is slim and it messes the actors around for small payback. But for fic it would do grand.
... especially if your pairing is Anyone Not His Sister, which, you know, *raises hand*
... look, if they're calling the same guy dad, she's his sister and it's creepy. making it so he never gets fostered there de creeps it and they could be together like he always wanted, I would have no objection to the new timeline of him doing that, but the timeline that remembers growing up with the same parent? creepy. So then the story has Barry/Iris with no incest and also Barry/Anyone.
If I fancied Barry at all I could see that being a Thing with Len, but as it is, that does nothing for me, I spend no brainspace on that. Though I've read a ridiculous amount of fic in a row lately and quite a few of them have been Mick/someone/Len'sMemory, like a threesome with a ghost, so that was interesting.
IF there's no Thawne taking over Wells then we get the third version of Wells in three seasons. *sigh*
But if there's no Thawne moving up the timetable then STAR labs exists but it's five years later doing the particle accelerator thing. No dark matter explosion, no metas. No flash isn't the half of it. Kendra and Carter still have their powers. Flash wasn't there to save Kendra when Savage found her? Except the Legends killed him at three different points in time so who knows at which point he got lingeringly dead? Ugh, there ought to be impact on the Legends personal histories, but they could be like Thawne, travelling hence insulated.
See my first thought was actually that fixits for the end of Legends are no longer precisely necessary, if you like angst. Because logically there's another version of Mick and Len out there, they're just not Captain Cold and Heatwave.
No Thawne, probably no Cisco at Star Labs, definitely no need to invent weapons to take down non existent metas or the non existent Flash. No cold gun, probably no heat gun. No getting kidnapped to make more guns, so no gold gun neither. Mick and Len are just a couple of criminals, same as ever. But without the heat gun Len has no reason to contact Mick again. So they might not even be together.
see again, should bork their personal histories, but given all the mess with the Vanishing Point, easy to give it a pass.
But without Barry who gives Len a push to think in new ways and try being a Legend?
Well, that would be Mick, going back and blurting his heart out.
Which could be a different push to get back together, if they needed one.
Or, and this is the fun yet angsty one, there could be a version of Len around who isn't Captain Cold yet, and a version of Mick who was never Heatwave, and they're not together... and Legends Mick, Kronos as was, still has their guns. So, does he steal Len to be his very own? Or does he try and get them back together? Would he think he was fixing the timeline to give Len the guns? How would Len feel about the two of him? There's a wide range of opinion on the substantive differences between Heatwave and Kronos, whether Mick has his scars or his original brain is apparently up for debate. Both of Mick would have a ton of feelings if any version of Len had to even appear to choose between them.
And I know my usual solution is threesome, but, *blinks a lot*
I mean some people don't get on with their former selves at all. Getting those three to a threesome place would be meaty character goodness for Mick. Micks. Both of him.
Plus it could get into stuff about disability and mental illness. I mean, if the Time Masters did something to his brain, maybe Kronos thinks Heatwave is disabled because of him being more impulsive and more of a pyro (if Kronos is a pyro now at all). But the Time Masters definitely fucked with his memories, so if he has chunks missing now, Heatwave could consider Kronos damaged too. So if I was writing it there's a whole thing about disability acceptance, starting from who you are and figuring out what progress would even mean from there.
So there's so much story type good stuff.
And it uses that Time Remnants thing for more than a few seconds and in a whole roads not taken way, rather than one bad guy playing dressup.
Except then Time Wraiths?
But it's a whole bunch of Story, if there's now two versions, one from a world without Flash.
And then there's Len. Lens. Plural of Leonard Snart.
... *blinks and sighs*
So, okay, how would the different branches see each other? Len would hear about all the decisions his other timeline made and just from the words he'd choose about it you'd have sides chosen. And how would a criminal who never talked to Barry see the guy who we saw at the Oculus?
... I feel he'd see him as stupid and figure out several escape plans. Which would be a new and different angle on the already frequently written fixit fic. Well, new in finished stories on Ao3 over 4K words, anyways.
So you'd have three of them for sure, potential for four, people looking at their older/younger selves in different ways, acceptance or the journey to it, big argues about cures and what that means, big argues about good and evil even.
And who exactly among them was selfish.
Because I keep thinking, in a world without Flash? Lisa died.
Lewis Snart wasn't influenced by the Flash. His plan wasn't STAR industries dependent. He just put a bomb in his daughter to get control of his son.
So how does that one work out without Team Flash to save her?
One logical way is Leonard pulling the trigger and hating himself forever for it being too late.
It wasn't just words got Leonard thinking a different way. Team Flash being there for him was a different thing than just having a crew for a job, one that he might have to kill if they went off plan.
Would he even know the value of partners?
Well after thirty years of knowing each other you'd hope, but they're not exactly healthy, whichever sort of relationship you see them as having.
So I just keep thinking around what Flash has done, and what it would impact, and where it wouldn't.
Like, Trickster, nothing to do with him depended on Thawne. His original reign and the return, they would happen, with no Flash to stop him. How would that work out?
But mostly I keep looping back to the idea there's a divergent timeline now where Mick and Len are both alive and were never messed around by the Time Masters, but Legends Mick could still exist fine on the Waverider. And there's a lot of story in that.
So I saw a whole season of Flash and basically wondered what it would do to the Rogues and how I could use it to sort out the end of season 1 of Legends.
Pretty clear which show I'm actively fannish about.
... I can tell where my fannish attention is focused, I immediately started figuring out how this would effect Mick and Len...
I'm not keen on how the Flash has been doing alternate Earths. Like, mostly there's no cause and effect, there's just different characters played by the same actors. That's not very interesting.
If their point was that sometimes people just choose to be their worst selves, that bad things can happen and people still choose good, then that kind of works.
Mostly I'm... not entirely interested in any of these characters.
That's partly because at the end of season 1 there should have been wild consequences and repercussions, and instead they just invented yet another magic for why there wasn't. So this season was all mucking around with time remnants, to explain why nothing changed at the end of the first season. And if they're not going to do consequences, why bother thinking?
So I don't have much to say about that entire season. The bits that felt like setup for Legends of Tomorrow were kind of interesting but weirdly disconnected. Everything being Zoom all the time was annoying. And a world that sets up repeatedly that it's a bad idea to trust anyone is just... blergh. Also the non-origin stories of familiar names gets tired too. Give us the shiny or don't, stop messing around making us jump at name recognition.
Jay Garrick turned out potentially interesting, though.
But then Barry hit the reset button on his entire life.
And apparently we get to see how that turned out in a couple weeks, if 'we' have the relevant TV channels, which, as far as I know, no. In the UK it's 25th October on Sky1, if I googled right. I'm not getting satellite just because I'm actively fannish about something for the first time in ages. Especially since the something is Legends of Tomorrow and not actually Flash, and that lacks specific air date in the UK that I found.
Buuuuuut... I'm thinking I have way more than a couple weeks worth of speculation fodder.
I mean, they just yanked out everything causal to the Flash, as we've seen it. Nobody will be the same.
And we don't know how time travel will work. If I was doing fic then I'd have Barry get 'back' to the future and find there's already a perfectly happy Barry living the life Barry wanted for himself, so all the Flash has left is being the Flash. Like, that's a logical consequence, seeing as the time traveller Barry is the time remnant now. He is an effect without causes. Paradoxical. There's logically no younger Barry leaving to do time travel, it shouldn't be like last time when he just mildly borked his own timeline but still was the person that could do travel come the day. He should get back and find a timeline that knows nothing of the Flash and a Barry Allen having his own life.
Doubt they'll do that, the long term potential is slim and it messes the actors around for small payback. But for fic it would do grand.
... especially if your pairing is Anyone Not His Sister, which, you know, *raises hand*
... look, if they're calling the same guy dad, she's his sister and it's creepy. making it so he never gets fostered there de creeps it and they could be together like he always wanted, I would have no objection to the new timeline of him doing that, but the timeline that remembers growing up with the same parent? creepy. So then the story has Barry/Iris with no incest and also Barry/Anyone.
If I fancied Barry at all I could see that being a Thing with Len, but as it is, that does nothing for me, I spend no brainspace on that. Though I've read a ridiculous amount of fic in a row lately and quite a few of them have been Mick/someone/Len'sMemory, like a threesome with a ghost, so that was interesting.
IF there's no Thawne taking over Wells then we get the third version of Wells in three seasons. *sigh*
But if there's no Thawne moving up the timetable then STAR labs exists but it's five years later doing the particle accelerator thing. No dark matter explosion, no metas. No flash isn't the half of it. Kendra and Carter still have their powers. Flash wasn't there to save Kendra when Savage found her? Except the Legends killed him at three different points in time so who knows at which point he got lingeringly dead? Ugh, there ought to be impact on the Legends personal histories, but they could be like Thawne, travelling hence insulated.
See my first thought was actually that fixits for the end of Legends are no longer precisely necessary, if you like angst. Because logically there's another version of Mick and Len out there, they're just not Captain Cold and Heatwave.
No Thawne, probably no Cisco at Star Labs, definitely no need to invent weapons to take down non existent metas or the non existent Flash. No cold gun, probably no heat gun. No getting kidnapped to make more guns, so no gold gun neither. Mick and Len are just a couple of criminals, same as ever. But without the heat gun Len has no reason to contact Mick again. So they might not even be together.
see again, should bork their personal histories, but given all the mess with the Vanishing Point, easy to give it a pass.
But without Barry who gives Len a push to think in new ways and try being a Legend?
Well, that would be Mick, going back and blurting his heart out.
Which could be a different push to get back together, if they needed one.
Or, and this is the fun yet angsty one, there could be a version of Len around who isn't Captain Cold yet, and a version of Mick who was never Heatwave, and they're not together... and Legends Mick, Kronos as was, still has their guns. So, does he steal Len to be his very own? Or does he try and get them back together? Would he think he was fixing the timeline to give Len the guns? How would Len feel about the two of him? There's a wide range of opinion on the substantive differences between Heatwave and Kronos, whether Mick has his scars or his original brain is apparently up for debate. Both of Mick would have a ton of feelings if any version of Len had to even appear to choose between them.
And I know my usual solution is threesome, but, *blinks a lot*
I mean some people don't get on with their former selves at all. Getting those three to a threesome place would be meaty character goodness for Mick. Micks. Both of him.
Plus it could get into stuff about disability and mental illness. I mean, if the Time Masters did something to his brain, maybe Kronos thinks Heatwave is disabled because of him being more impulsive and more of a pyro (if Kronos is a pyro now at all). But the Time Masters definitely fucked with his memories, so if he has chunks missing now, Heatwave could consider Kronos damaged too. So if I was writing it there's a whole thing about disability acceptance, starting from who you are and figuring out what progress would even mean from there.
So there's so much story type good stuff.
And it uses that Time Remnants thing for more than a few seconds and in a whole roads not taken way, rather than one bad guy playing dressup.
Except then Time Wraiths?
But it's a whole bunch of Story, if there's now two versions, one from a world without Flash.
And then there's Len. Lens. Plural of Leonard Snart.
... *blinks and sighs*
So, okay, how would the different branches see each other? Len would hear about all the decisions his other timeline made and just from the words he'd choose about it you'd have sides chosen. And how would a criminal who never talked to Barry see the guy who we saw at the Oculus?
... I feel he'd see him as stupid and figure out several escape plans. Which would be a new and different angle on the already frequently written fixit fic. Well, new in finished stories on Ao3 over 4K words, anyways.
So you'd have three of them for sure, potential for four, people looking at their older/younger selves in different ways, acceptance or the journey to it, big argues about cures and what that means, big argues about good and evil even.
And who exactly among them was selfish.
Because I keep thinking, in a world without Flash? Lisa died.
Lewis Snart wasn't influenced by the Flash. His plan wasn't STAR industries dependent. He just put a bomb in his daughter to get control of his son.
So how does that one work out without Team Flash to save her?
One logical way is Leonard pulling the trigger and hating himself forever for it being too late.
It wasn't just words got Leonard thinking a different way. Team Flash being there for him was a different thing than just having a crew for a job, one that he might have to kill if they went off plan.
Would he even know the value of partners?
Well after thirty years of knowing each other you'd hope, but they're not exactly healthy, whichever sort of relationship you see them as having.
So I just keep thinking around what Flash has done, and what it would impact, and where it wouldn't.
Like, Trickster, nothing to do with him depended on Thawne. His original reign and the return, they would happen, with no Flash to stop him. How would that work out?
But mostly I keep looping back to the idea there's a divergent timeline now where Mick and Len are both alive and were never messed around by the Time Masters, but Legends Mick could still exist fine on the Waverider. And there's a lot of story in that.
So I saw a whole season of Flash and basically wondered what it would do to the Rogues and how I could use it to sort out the end of season 1 of Legends.
Pretty clear which show I'm actively fannish about.
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