#also barry was so fucking cool in the blackest night comics

[flashfuture]

Just me thinking about how much this family means to Hal and how much they mean to him. 

(Flash vol 1 #276)

(Green Arrow vol 3 #17)

Okay those two killed me. I don’t think it was an intentional parallel but my brain made the connection. It hurts me right in the feels almost as much as Hal’s awful shoulders here. 

(Green Lantern vol 3 #64)

(Green Lantern vol 3 #103)

Ah the Uncle Hal saga 

(Flash & Green Lantern: The Brave and the Bold #4)

The reason is because Barry doesn’t wanna share Hal with Ollie lol. 

(Blackest Night #3) 

“I need to slow down. For myself. My family and friends. Iris. Wally. You.” 

#dc comics #barry allen #iris west allen #hal jordan #wally west #god hals poor shoulders in that GA issue #thats not even how it happened but whatever #also yeah i hope hal doesnt really love Iris like a sister cause he tried to kiss her the issue before #and he flirts with her sometimes #and he obviously does not treat barry like one of his brothers #heteronormativity is something else i say #also barry was so fucking cool in the blackest night comics #like damn how did they ever do anything without you cool #okay and i cant stress enough how sweet hal is with wally as a kid #like let hal be a dad already dc #just yeah this family is so good #and it matters to me so you all get to see it

[anaer]

WALLY

WALLY WEST ok!!!

First impression:

Okay, so this is actually hilarious to me because my first impression of Wally was, like…Barry. As in, I read I think it was…Blackest Night because I wanted to get into DC after a lifelong commitment to Marvel, and that was right after Barry had come back to life, and I was like “Oh, damn. The Flash seems cool; I should read more with him.” SACRILEGE, basically. So I went digging into the annals of every good Flash comic before that, which was OBVIOUSLY Wally, but like I fully went into that not caring about the difference between them I just wanted superspeed fun. I was a fraud.

But honestly as soon as I started reading him, I loved him. I loved him more than Barry. Barry can go die, things were fine then. It was like…love at first sight, fictional character edition. I consumed SO MANY FLASH COMICS in SUCH a short time and Wally was all I thought about for, like, a month.

Impression now:

There has never and there will NEVER BE a character that I will EVER stan as hard as I stan Wally West. He’s the perfect character. Everything about him: made ENTIRELY for me. His sass. His angst. His PERFECT LOVE STORY. The way I connect to him as such a flawless representation of what Adult ADHD feels like to me (which in hindsight is half of why I immediately fell in love with him, but I mean: did I even know what ADHD was when I started reading the Flash? Hah. No.)

Oh my god, even his completely SHIT relationship with his parents, his self-worth issues, the fact that he is, in fact, better than everyone else around him (cough: Barry). Every time he’s an asshole, I adore. Every time he’s sweet, I adore. HE’S SO PROBLEMATIC. Why do people think he’s a perfect best friend type; he’s a grade A asshole!!! I mean, also he’s a great friend, but he’s the kind of good friend who knows he’s an asshole but makes it fun, so everyone likes him.

But honestly, it’s his character development. People always like to say that Dick embodies the whole legacy aspect of DC the best, becoming Nightwing, but that’s not true to me. It’s Wally. Wally learns, grows, develops, and surpasses Barry. It’s literally his whole story. And not just in story: there’s been SO MUCH conflict around him since they brought Barry back because he even became a hell of a lot more popular than Barry in real life, too, among fans until they decided to write him out of existence. It’s a testament to how strong his character was that they got rid of him for five years, and really fucked him over for a good decade, and he still has such a strong fanbase.

But, like, you grow with him. He goes successfully from like…this complete, utter asshole of a man-ho whose got a good heart to like…a still short-tempered but generally friendly, lovable, committed father and husband. And he doesn’t regress as a character; they’re not resetting him back over to where he started. His status quo successfully changed. His character development stuck, and he had a very clear character, a very clear personality, in a medium where a lot of other characters don’t get that. Personalities change with the writers, but even with that…Wally’s writers grew him so well, building one off the other until he developed into the character he is today. I never, ever get tired of rereading his Flash.

He's the greatest character in DC, fuck everyone else. No, I do not take criticism.

Favorite moment:

SO MANY. But the top one has got to be what he did to Inertia. That was really, really, really fucked up. But also there was that time his dad was like “hey I murdered your mom, join me in evil” and Wally was like “what the fuck, dad, I’m calling the police” and then Rudy had him beaten up by evil Russian speedsters.

OH. Or the time Rudy got Wally to join a cult by pretending to be a ghost.

WAIT NO.

My absolute favourite moment is 2016’s Rebirth, when he comes back. Those years without him were SO long for me, and I was so, so angry at DC. I had stopped reading entirely, and that comic was BEAUTIFUL and that hug between Wally and Barry was everything. And then DC fucked it all up but. That moment. That moment was so good.

I mean, but also, the VERY NUMBER ONE BEST IS:

Idea for a story:

All my ideas lately. There are way too many, and I am writing most of them. But to pick one:

Wally is a disaster bi who doesn’t know he’s bi because obviously everyone is into both and you choose, right?

Unpopular opinion:

Birdflash is the absolute WORST Wally ship, and the majority of people who ship it honestly don’t give a fuck about Wally. They ship it just to pair Dick up with someone to love him, and Wally loses all personality and semblance of himself. Honestly, I used to read birdflash because I will read pretty much anything with Wally, but the fandom turned me off. People act like it’s the default ship, like of course everyone HAS to ship them, and then Wally’s life becomes just…everything centered around Dick most of the time, I’ve even seen this to the point where people act like Wally’s relationships with Barry and especially Iris just don’t exist or matter. Those things are the things that make Wally who he is. I like Wally and Dick’s friendship, generally, but aside from canon shoving it down my throat, I wouldn’t even really categorize Dick as Wally’s best friend for most of his life. Maybe his old, childhood best friend, and the friendship still lasts, but for the bulk of Wally’s Flash run, his best friend was 100% Piper. Like, Dick was not one of Wally’s most important relationships. That was very much like a “someone randomly decided to make this a thing” without the actual story to back it up, which I find endlessly frustrating.

That being said, that time Dick and Wally roadtripped together is also one of my favourite issues and one of those peak ADHD Wally issues.

Favorite relationship:

Oh, this is the easiest. Wally/Linda. I’ve never loved a canon ship more. They’re perfect for each other in every way, they complement each other well, they build each other up, they EARNED their happy ending, and their kids are fucking adorable. Honestly, Linda was the best thing to ever happen to Wally, but I also love their relationship because its not just about making him a better person. She, too, learns and grows from their relationship, and she understands him, and they generally don’t have any like…super contrived, annoying relationship drama which is the bane of my existence in comics. I mean, aside from that one time Geoff Johns decided to make Linda leave and the cops decide that Wally had murdered her for no reason at all. Geoff Johns doesn’t count. Everything Waid did with them – and honestly, not even just Waid, this goes back to the FANTASTIC early days of them hating each other and growing into friends with Moessner-Loebs – was just…perfect writing. Linda’s a hero in her own right. When Wally “died” and she went after Kobra herself because she was so distraught I was shook. And then when Wally showed up again in that blast of lightning to stop Kobra from killing her it was so…good… Terminal Velocity is SO. GOOD.

Runners Up: Batflash. Roy/Wally. Piper/Wally. Hunter/Wally. Anyone-but-Dick-Grayson/Wally.

Favorite headcanon:

Wally is a super duper closeted bi. He doesn’t realise he’s bi. Everyone he’s close to has realised he’s bi. Linda knows. Piper knows. All the Titans know. (Roy definitely knows, hell yeah.) Wally isn’t even so much in denial as he doesn’t even think it’s a possibility, and it’s entirely Barry’s fault. Barry told him it was fine to mess around with boys, all guys do it, but then you settle down with a woman because you’re Straight. (Barry ALSO had some internal ish going on, I’m sure he worked it out at some point)

Anyway, Wally internalized that because everything Barry ever said is correct, so, no, Linda. He’s OBVIOUSLY straight, why would you think otherwise—so what if he made out with Roy, what does that matter?

#wally west #have i mentioned lately that i love him #i have more pictures but i'm lazy i should wally spam the wally blog #ask me