On my world, it means hope.

- Is there going to be no end to the times Laurel gets Damsel in Distress-ed? The frequency of it is starting to become disturbing.

- So...we have Sebastian Blood, who's Latino, and a villain (moreover, a villain being ordered around by a bigger mastermind villain who's a white man), and next week the villain looks like a black man. Oh, and let's not forget China White from season one, a villain-for-hire. Someone's probably going to say "But most of the villains are white, not PoC!" True...except look at the tally of PoC in general in this show. Apart from those 3 villains, we have Yao Fei (dead), Shado (brutally fridged for TWO men's manpain), Detective McKenna (effectively erased from the show), Laurel's friend Joanna (also disappeared since Season 1), Frank Chen (dead), Detective Lance's partner (fridged), and Diggle (alive).* Nope, Diggle being an awesome character does not outweigh EVERY OTHER POC being either villainous, dead, or Put On a Bus.

(* I'm sure I'm missing some characters; if I am missing major ones, let me know.)

I loved 2x08 "The Scientist." I love Grant Gustin's take on Barry Allen, who's such a lovable geeky dork but also really earnest. You get the feeling that a lot of his smiling and awkward joke attempts are used to bandage his childhood trauma and cover up the fact that though he's highly intelligent, he's a little insecure and uncomfortable in his skin.

For the most part, internet reaction to Grant Gustin!Barry Allen seems to be positive, though of course there are still people who are like "HE'S NOT THE BARRY ALLEN I KNOW." Which, on the one hand, I'm always puzzled by the fact that people hate different interpretations of an established character. It's one thing if a version is inferior to the original (for example, TMNT 2012 compared to TMNT 2003 is kind of sexist, has the turtles being arrogant and not at all brotherly with each other); it's another thing if it's just different.

On the other hand, I'm kind of laughing because no one in their right minds should expect the Arrow-verse to stick closely to DC canon by now. Arrow...

- turned Green Arrow from a kind of lighthearted Batman to a super-serious, very Batman-esque hero with PTSD and a tortured past.
- did not have Dinah Laurel Lance become the Black Canary; instead, her sister is, and Arrow!Black Canary is also an ex-League of Assassins assassin, oh, and she also has PTSD now and is kind of a Broken Bird (no pun intended). And, Black Canary uses a sonic-pulse-emitting iPod instead of having her "Canary Scream."
- Dinah Laurel Lance's mother wasn't ever the Black Canary, either.
- gave Roy Harper a completely different backstory from his comic one (he has no archery training in Arrow).
- has "Speedy" who is Oliver's sister instead of Roy's nickname.
- has a daughter of Ra's al-Ghul who isn't Talia al-Ghul.
- changed Huntress from seeking vengeance for her family's murder to seeking vengeance on her father for her fiancé's murder. And she dated Oliver for a little bit and Oliver was the one who designed her costume. (Blegh.)

And, you know, this is far from an exhaustive list.

Although Arrow-verse's tendency to "rework" DC canon has made it really surprising when episode 2x08 revealed that...


...apparently Barry's mother was killed by Reverse-Flash, just like in the pre-New 52 comics. Yes, I am legitimately shocked that they kept this bit in, since I thought they would've gone for a more "realistic" route. I wonder whether they're keeping the idea from the comics that Reverse-Flash actually traveled back in time to kill Barry's mom and frame his dad, since this seems pretty random for this to just be a random crime. But that would bring all sorts of icky implications...


To get back to the original topic, I can't wait for next week's episode and I'm dying to see the Flash TV series. Speaking of which, the rumor going around is that the Iris West to Grant Gustin's Barry Allen is going to be cast as African-American, which, if true—AMAZING! And all the more reason to watch the hell out of that show when it airs!

Of course...the rumor was immediately met by racist comments like "Why are they making her black?", but oddly, the most vitriolic reactions were "Oh no that means Wally West is going to be black OH THE HORROR" and "Oh no that means Bart Allen is going to be black and so are the Tornado Twins OH THE HORROR!" (I mean, chances of Wally or Bart appearing in the new series are pretty slim at this point anyways. If Wally is even mentioned as being alive as Iris's nephew, he's sure as hell not going to become Kid Flash unless Iris's older sibling is much older than her. And the Arrow-verse might be starting to introduce the idea of superpowers, but I find it really unlikely that they're going to make the jump to time travel.)

More weird is the fact that a bunch of people seem to be taking issue with the fact that Iris is described as a psychology grad student instead of a reporter. (1) She could become a reporter when she graduates; there's such a thing called changing career ideas. (2) People say having her be a psychologist is cliché...but how exactly is this cliché? I can't recall a single major superhero's love interest who is a psychologist.

The only thing that bothers me is that her dad is now "Detective West," and I'm worried it'll repeat Green Arrow & Detective Lance's relationship, or even Spider-Man & Officer Stacy's relationship from The Amazing Spider-Man. Having the male superhero's love interest's dad be a police officer isn't exactly original by this point.

Otherwise, I'm so stoked for the Flash TV series, and I'm going to watch Barry Allen 20 more times now.

So the guy playing Barry Allen on Arrow is really cute. I know Barry is usually portrayed a bit older, but I guess I can't complain if The CW wants a young, hip Barry Allen (the actor's only one year older than me o_O).

Yesterday I read the issues from The Flash: Brightest Day/Road to Flashpoint, a.k.a. the Flash issues right before the New 52 reboot. And now I can finally articulate why I've found New 52 Flash to be meh from a writing standpoint (it's stellar from an art standpoint—so stellar that I am gladly following Manapul and Buccatello to Detective Comics next spring).

According to the writing in Brightest Day, Barry Allen's life stopped when his mother was murdered and he became obsessed with solving her case...until he became The Flash and started to look forward to the future again. That's a good setup for character development, right? But in the New 52, that's not really the case. I mean, yeah, they say he's obsessed with his mom's murder in issue #0 and again at the end of issue #24, but other than that he seems pretty well-adjusted. He has a girlfriend for crying out loud. And that's kind of the problem with New 52 Flash: I love him, he's a super nice guy, but his character doesn't have that much room to grow. So far his issues/arcs have been more about other characters rather than about him.

I also dislike how the emphasis in New 52 Flash is on his struggle to prove his father's innocence. DC comics are already filled with superheroes who are much more influenced by their fathers than their mothers; it would've been nice to have the Flash be different for a change. But not anymore. Sigh.

Watched an episode of Arrow's Season 2 (after quitting partway through Season 1) just to see Black Canary, because Black Canary is the best, and I'm thrilled to finally see her in the show.

Kind of.

** SPOILERS BELOW **

Okay, so...Black Canary in Arrow seems to be an ex-League of Assassins, um, assassin, and is now a violent vigilante in Starling City like Oliver Queen. Apparently she's supposed to go back to the League of Assassins, but she doesn't want to. And seriously, I just don't like this direction at all to take Black Canary's character (even though we know this Black Canary isn't permanent because Dinah Laurel Lance has to eventually take the job). It just seems way too grimdark and angsty for a character who, in the comics, is usually pretty well-adjusted.

Let me add that I also really hated how Laurel was Damsel in Distress'ed AGAIN in episode 2x03, in a pretty horrifying way that was clearly intended to give her dad manpain.

I know Arrow is supposed to be a "realistic" take on superheroes in the vein of The Dark Knight, but I've always felt like that "realism" is pretty arbitrary. For example, Oliver Queen can shoot arrows with perfect aim in near-darkness? (I don't care if his vision is perfectly 20/20, there's a reason night vision goggles were invented, and that's because human beings have terrible night vision.) And his disguise is a hood and a line of green paint across his eyes? Uhh...sure...not like hoods ever fall off or anything when you're running. I'll admit that I've always thought the domino masks commonly used by most superheroes seem to be kind of flimsy disguises, but at least they're better than green paint across your eyes. And Black Canary's "Canary Scream" has been changed to a remote device that emits sonic impulses. Okay...but does Black Canary herself have earplugs to prevent her own eardrums from being ruptured? I mean, this was also a question in the comics, but there's a bit more leeway there since she had a superpower; when you try to make things "dark" and "gritty" and "ultrarealistic," you don't have that excuse.

Also, I'm still uncomfortable with the way Oliver Queen is presented as a hero. He views any other vigilante as a threat...despite the fact that they're usually only marginally more violent than he is. I mean, maybe he stopped killing random guards in Season 2 (I think), but he still interrogates people for information in really violent ways.

This episode was actually pretty good, cheesy romantic drama aside. (Did the show forget that Laurel is supposed to be dating Tommy? Because I haven't seen them together since they decided they should actually be a couple.)

So Oliver planned everything out ahead of time. Okay. We also get more answers about what happened to Oliver on the island and the source of his PTSD. Cool. And Moira has suddenly become a far more complicated character than we thought. Because of a previous episode, I thought she intentionally had her husband and son killed off, but now it seems as though that wasn't her decision; rather, she's working for someone else. But the questions remain: Who is she working for? Why did they need to sabotage the yacht? Was Moira down with this, and why? And we still don't know why the yacht's been salvaged.

I didn't like the fact that Laurel's mom is revealed to have run away after Laurel's sister's death. (Her mom is supposed to be the original Black Canary sobsob)

Aside from Moira and Laurel, female characters didn't really have any major roles in this episode.

I stand corrected: apparently Oliver's superhero outfit is bulletproof. Which is why he willingly goes into battle with guys with machine guns. Still, how much of his body does this bulletproof armor cover? This episode shows it doesn't cover his arms, so does it cover his legs? His head?? All it would take is one bullet to put Oliver out of commission, so it still looks to me like he has super dodging skills. (Also, I haven't done any research into bulletproof wear, but while Oliver may not die if he gets a bullet to the torso, the force of impact should at least knock him down. So far, this has only happened once, in the pilot episode.)

Now, Episode 3. (Or, "In Which Oliver Queen Does Assassin's Creed-Style Parkour")

So I think we're actually starting to see some improvement here in terms of female characters. Laurel finally actually kicks some ass! And there's a mother-daughter bonding moment between Thea and Moira Queen! Of course, that doesn't negate the fact that Thea is a shoplifting, drug- and alcohol-using troubled little sis and Moira, for all we know, is still evil. And Thea is continuing to be mean to Oliver and throw hissy fits whenever he tries to actually be a responsible big brother. Sigh.

But THAT ENDING. If there's one thing Arrow knows how to do so far, it's how to write a cliffhanger ending.

I actually like this episode quite a bit. Not too much happens, because it's all about Oliver trying to find and eliminate Deadshot, but the execution is not too bad.

Tommy has been a really good friend to Oliver so far. I shudder to think about how he'll eventually wind up as Green Arrow's archnemesis, Merlyn.

It's interesting to compare Arrow to Batman Begins, as the stories are, in certain ways, very similar (wealthy billionaire returns home after a prolonged absence to fight crime), and yet there are a couple of key differences: In Arrow, Oliver Queen returns home with a vendetta and isn't actually above killing people to fulfill his goals, although he usually tries to give his target a chance to repent (I feel bad for all the security guards who get shot, though). Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, is anti-injustice in general and very much against killing. I'm very curious as to whether people (who find out about Oliver's identity) will eventually call him out for the violence he's causing. Certainly Detective Lance is, but so far I feel that he's there in the story more as an obstacle rather than a moral objection to vigilante violence. If the show does explore the implications of vigilante violence, that would elevate it to one of the more nuanced, thoughtful, intelligent TV shows out there. But I mustn't get my hopes up, for that way disappointment lies...

I had an interesting thought while watching this episode: What if, instead of Laurel's dad being the detective/cop, it was her mom? Wouldn't that make the story so much more interesting?