The Flash

[Pinky]

[Pinky]

[Pinky]

[Pinky]

Thoughts put into a blog post at https://pinkyguerrero.blogspot.com/2...rry-probs.html

[Pinky]

I know, typos suck. It was "I'd have left"












This next got 2200 impressions really fast, and we all know that means this is really the Iris West show and Barry is just her sidekick. I loved Iris as the key player since the show began.



*wondering what the heck door I was talking about*

[Pinky]

Joe's tears.











And that is where I dropped off radar because real life.

Don't forget that The Flash Season 6 DVD & blu-ray release is scheduled for Aug. 25, 2020!

[Pinky]

season four Harry

from #pinkyblog 7-7-20

"Is there anything you can't take the fun out of?"

"Reef beeping."

*wtf*

That is from The Flash season 4 episode 11 The Elongated Knight Rises.

I was spacing out but that put me back on full alert. Reef beeping?








And as if that weren't amusing enough on its own, throw Harrison Wells into the search with reef beeping and you get this fun article.

The Mystery of the 'Harrison Special'



Some lines from the article struck me as synchronistically funny- For a car that’s spent so much of its time not being anywhere that people knew, it’s a little remarkable just how many places and stories this car features in... But that process—the restoration in which the past and the present meet, where the Harrison is reborn—is a whole separate story. This story is the story of the Harrison Special as it was, its myths and legends, its creators and caretakers. How it connects people, some family, some colleagues, some generations apart.

Kinda like Harrison Wells, lol, since he wasn't in the original comic.




Back to reef beeping, this article reads like an instruction manual for handling on set problems with multi monitor displays during filming of Harry scenes.

My Radions are beeping and changing colors, what's going on?

XD

[Pinky]

back to The Flash- yes, another rewatch, huzzah!

This is a copy of an oddball post wherein I talked myself into doing another complete series The Flash rewatch, originally published on Oct 1, 2020.

I got this shot pointing my phone at my TV.

(two days ago)
So I'm still looking around all the particle accelerator news and scifi history online that I can find, and I ran into the Bevatron, an accelerator in a scifi novel written in 1957 called Eye in the Sky. Check out the latest real eye in the sky tech.
Gorgon Stare: persistent eye in the sky may be coming to a City near you


Also, some of us already know about Five Eyes global surveillance. If you are interested in mil op level intel leaks, this site is still up. qalert.app





You know, since #teamflash talk about their satellites all the time... May as well get to know real world, guys.


Wo, just ran into the origin of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, lol. It was a scifi story.
Continuum and the Bootstrap Paradox

omg sadness I had no idea young Barry died in real life last April.

O_O Check this one out.

Scientists have successfully developed a pocket-sized particle accelerator capable of projecting ultra-short electron beams with laser light at more than 99.99% of the speed of light.

And it already has application potential
The Pocket-Sized Particle Accelerator


So this lengthy scifi show about an accident in the pipeline of a particle accelerator is fine and all, a story from decades ago via comics, but is it important? So much of our entertainment can be grouped and sorted into themes.

• survival after world cataclysm
• the horror of worldwide pandemic
• politics extended off planet via a Federation or other
• other basic themes

Just saying. If you haven't yet noticed that we just spent the last decade being slammed with this stuff, they you must live under a pretty big rock. Politics off world goes back my entire lifetime and beyond, so I literally grew up swimming in that.

What theme does The Flash fall into? Besides the superhero theme thing. The whole alt-world thing is as dominant as it was in Sliders. Alt-world scenarios weren't terribly common before Sliders showed up in the 1990s, BUT they already existed in comics. I'm looking for earliest world crossovers and so far I'm running into 1966. I turned five that year. So The Flash doing crossover worlds on film now is 50+ years of 'crossover tech' ideas that we've been exposed to, and I keep finding evidence that particle accelerators go back even further. Just to give us an idea how this fits into 2008 common discourse, check out comments at Centauri Dreams where particle accelerators meet black holes. Those of us paying attention are paying attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(yesterday)
I know I have a list of projects a mile long, but I found myself moping around for 3 days in a row and finally put it up to a vote, what do we really want to be doing? Another The Flash rewatch was the almost instant unanimous answer, something rare in my bossy alt-esque life, so how could I say no? BUT, I put my foot down on committing to studious research through it this time, and everyone happily gurgled promises of focused research, another rare thing in my very distracting and scattered life. Maybe this will be good for me.


So that rewatch started yesterday, and today episode 2 two surprised me. Only minutes in there's this convo after Barry runs off without perms and was barely supervised risking his life saving others.

Barry: Dr. Wells, I doubt restraint is how you got to be the man you are today.

Wells: In a wheelchair, and a pariah, lack of restraint is what made me these things.

How many times have I missed that???









I know, right. Did we get the hint that early? Or was that some huge accident of filming fate? Because that was uttered 5 years before official news came out.

There's another thing I've not really brought up during The Flash watches, and I know this will only make me seem crazier, but tell me the world isn't already crazy.

Throughout this series, every modern conspiracy theory out there is skillfully addressed as a real life issue. In this second ep, it's cloning. Cloning is huge with some of the qanons lately, as evidenced by collections of multiple shots of politicians, celebrities, and journalists, and some of them are freakishly casual about pointing out missing earlobes (purportedly a DNA cloning glitch), bone structure changes around eye sockets (body doubles), and other differences that can only be explained by medical gender switching. In this ep of The Flash, Caitlin exuberantly describes how easy it was getting meta stem cells to grow a full sized replica of their baddie in a matter of days or even hours. If I'm understanding conspiracy cloning, it takes 5 months to fast grow replica clones, confirmed by a few now rogue deep state scientists who claim to have been forcefully employed to experiment and work on cloning, which they insist has been going on since the 1940s, and Caitlin scifi cloned even faster. Cloning in comics goes way back, just like particle accelerator science does in both comics and real life.

IF cloning is an actual real off the grid science in our world, then it stands to reason part of why it shows up in scifi entertainment is to soft sell the idea and get us used to it before it becomes publicly marketed hard product. Or, as some film conspiracy theorists believe, these kinds of stories (and now TV shows) are soft intel drops, again, to accustom us to that level of tech so that when we find out it's real, we don't freak out. (Especially if that tech is already integrated into our own bodies without our knowledge or consent.) Please note this very concerning article addresses techocratic giants getting away with a list of personally invasive crimes without general consent of the public or in user settings, although we are learning that much of danger in this world rides on 'silent consent'. For many of us, this consent hinges on keeping us in the dark, ignorant of actual transparency because it is so overwhelmingly onerous that we skip learning about it before we click 'accept'.
In Congress's big tech hearing, look beyond technology policy


I also shared very disturbing insight into 'wetware' in this blog post back in February 2019. We'll get back to this when Harry works on his brain booster tech against DeVoe in season four.
wetware on a prison planet

These are not uncommon thoughts among 'the woke'. Just bringing it up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(today)
I guess it would be nice of me to get more screenshots.

Iris West is our personal journey viewer crossover from 'science fiction writing' to journalism. This is from her anonymous blog. Sound familiar? We've had anonymous bloggers for years spilling about the fantastic.




The person who heckled her the most about this 'science fiction writing' was Flash himself, trying to keep a lid on his cover. I see this a lot among certain qanons. There are many who want to blow the lids off, but a few who cautiously keep them in place. Why? Because it's not time for the reveals yet.

Story reveals are carefully timed out in good writing. Too soon and they blow up as laughable fiction. Too late and they fall flat as obvious. Good rhetoric holds reveals out as enticing impossibilities, but visible to all throughout, unrevealed.

I ran into this thread last night. Scroll back and forth after you click. Since we are a nation led on every single day with carrots and apples, we are addicted to leaks about reveals. That thread is as eye opening as it gets.

Same applies to entertainment. We get drips about film projects, we get controlled leaks about story lines and character placement, and we dutifully line up for entertainment on cue. We buy the merch, we haunt the webs, and we world tweet the live broadcasts together. This level of storytelling is hewn out of the science of financial returns. Great storytelling meets great returns. It's not a coincidence that our entire lives are structured around this principle in everything we do, constant and continual leaks and drips of 'information'. We crave it. We are addicted to it.

So early on, we are introduced to the idea that science fiction writing can smoothly morph into journalism. A good journalist never reveals sources and strives for truth. Iris West is our model for good truther journalism.

She's a Flash truther.

Did any of you ever think of her that way?

Just a reminder that I am a HUGE Iris West fan.



See all my The Flash watch hashtags at #theflash, #teamflash, and #teamwells. Most of those are original watch. I'm on at least my 5th entire series rewatch now. About to take out my Gotham bender from last year. I take my TV watching very seriously.

:edit: I evidently have a memory gap, my #Gotham hash exists. I imagine more surprises await me.




Yeah, see, I had no memory of this.
Baby Barry probs

This is long and thinky. I'll try to lean back toward a few extra screenshots next time. I'm starting ep 5. Have some fun while I run off and do things.

[Pinky]

Caitlin and Cisco in season one

originally published on 10-5-2020 (broken links remain sourced in the original publish)











I might be saying stuff that people who haven't done a The Flash entire series watch might not appreciate yet, so scroll at your own risk.

I'm being serious.













Things we're learning on our The Flash rewatch-

• Caitlin keeps a blood collection kit in her purse, saying she has hobbies. -dark-
• Dr. Wells and Cisco have a veiled very strained relationship.

I didn't think about these things during the original watch because I was so distracted with real life, I just didn't have the extra time to reflect on what I was seeing. The setup behind first season Flash isn't about what we're being told, it's about what we're not being told.





Knowing what I know now, I can look back and say neither Cisco nor Caitlin ever knew so much as an inkling about original Wells, excepting by way of fake Wells (who apparently even wrote a biography). I know that was obvious by the end of season one, but I didn't put in much think time on it. Eobard got to know both Caitlin and Cisco very well. He manipulated them like puppets and they never caught on. This was not originally intended during his quest to find Flash and kill him, but unfolded into bigger picture plan over 15 years, which takes us awhile to find out.





Eobard hand picked Caitlin to be part of the S.T.A.R. Labs team before the particle accelerator construction was finished, we know that much, possibly as early as medical equipment came in, so several years. We get hints early on that Caitlin has a private dark side to her, but the hints are so slight or simply passed off over the death of her fiance Ronnie Raymond that most of us might not even notice she's an odd duck. She's older enough than 'the children' (per Harry, season 2) that she's a bit bossy and often stands in equal agreement/opposition to Dr. Wells concerning the younger ones, Cisco, Barry, Jesse, and Wally being very late teens to mid-20s. Caitlin is practically a widow because her fiance died, a sort of parental figure for rules and regs as she runs the lab's biological tech department (from medical to satellite sciences), and she's acutely aware of her professionalism and status. Long before Frost came along breaking into her inner demons, Dr. Snow was rigidly authoritative, sometimes rife with hidden doubts and anxieties, which we get to see develop later when she finally delves into her mom issues.





What did Eobard Thawne see in Caitlin? Why her? After all, he was her employer. Not Wells. Dr. Wells never employed Dr. Caitlin Snow. You can really twist your mind up on this stuff. Personally, I think Eobard sensed that Caitlin could be secretive (I'm sure he knew exactly the kinds of things she kept in her purse), and that she would staunchly keep his own secrets as part of her guarded world if she were manipulated correctly. Caitlin was easily emotionally manipulated. That accident was planned, remember? 'Wells' hung back while Ronnie and Cisco ran down to attempt stopping the reaction. They were all expendable. We didn't see Eobard-as-Wells holding Caitlin's world together via S.T.A.R. Labs after Ronnie died. We didn't get to see her falling for the kindness and foundation he offered for her to continue there. After all, she could have tried going after a wrongful death lawsuit, or simply just left out of despair, but she wound up becoming extremely devoted to Wells and S.T.A.R. Labs despite her fiance being killed in the explosion.





Eobard Thawne, masked as Dr. Wells, was a criminal deluxe, a murderer who fiddled around screwing up the timeline worse than anyone, ever, which we find out later in crossovers. I've kind of been feeling obsessed with this since last July when I wrote

"I guess that brings me back to Thawne. If you haven't seen that or know what I'm talking about, I'm not going to rehash. Anyone who's felt like their life was stalled out on sticky tape for years on end would get it, and I daresay that's probably quite a lot of us. I live for the 'think' moments, when years of this or that thought trail congeal into a rush of knowledge.

One day a very long time ago, I wondered how no one creating a fiction to share could seem to grasp the idea that a self on its own timeline could affect its past. The Thawne escape arc is brilliant, thank you for making that dream exist for us to experience a reality together in, guys."

From season 5, pic of my TV

So this really evil guy, who is willing to do ANYTHING to get what he wants, including encouraging a meta to kill someone for him (s1.5), employed Dr. Caitlin Snow as part of his scheming. She is literally part of his plan, and, for now, doesn't have a clue. She's been working with this guy for years and has no idea how evil he is because he's playing such a long game. His focus is so intent that he doesn't make friends or have a social life, and everyone is surprised when he knows which wing of the mall the Big Belly Burger is in. I get the idea that he lurks alone and everyone is so used to it that he comes and goes whenever without question.

click to see more quotes

Let this sink in. This is how it works in real life, too. You are being shown on a screen how well a really evil person can manipulate other people to get what he wants, especially if there is a long game going on. Anyone who is incredulous that a real life person couldn't possibly be bad after they get caught doing something heinous, he was such a nice guy, or so thoughtful or whatever, this is how true evil works. That's what makes it so evil. I have loads of respect for the creators of The Flash series for sticking to the integrity of what evil really is. I've seen way too many other series cop out to finding the humanity in the bad guy, only to blur the lines of good and evil so badly that they may as well not have brought it up in the first place.

That being said, I remember ranting a bit during my original watch to give me 5 minutes in lockup with Thawne, I'd fixed so much stuff for him.

You guys, I'm not even a Flash fan, I'm #TeamWells, and I rant about Wells getting sloppy all. the. time. For a genius he's just pretty stupid. I want five minutes in lockup with evil Wells/Thawne, I will fix so much stuff for him. Fortunately, Scott has never lost it over me hitting the pause button every 30 seconds when I go insane over writing problems.

Yes, I was mad at Thawne for being stupid about a few things. The thing about writers making a character an evil genius is that the character is only as smart as the writer.

So we're not being told yet that Dr. Wells is an evil body snatcher in season 1, and that he was the one who supervised S.T.A.R. Labs construction and hired all the staff, not the real Dr. Wells. We find out later that he retained Dr. Wells' memories after murdering him and swiping his entire body code, and that he actually misses Tess because of that, and we also find out he had feelings about working for years with Caitlin. *sick* The writers never go into the deep end of that pool, but that was enough to tell you huge amounts about this evil sicko manipulating people who were already dead to him. (Imagine a psychopathic murderer body snatcher being able to revisit someone else's deep feelings about their wife after he murdered them both. Just bringing that up opens to the door to the very slightest hint that he might've gotten off on that.

This and the next four screenshots click to the fanvid I lifted them from.

And what about Cisco? Fake Wells and Cisco very obviously have a sometimes rocky working relationship, very different from fake Wells and Caitlin. Probably because it's already weirdly tense for Cisco after the explosion with all the extra guilt about Ronnie dying trapped inside him, instead of approaching Dr. Wells with his concerns about possibly having to stop Barry if he ever went evil, Cisco built the cold gun completely on his own, apparently unbeknownst to his employer. Imagine having that level of access to materials and making the brash decision to use those materials to create new very dangerous tech. S.T.A.R. Labs was already designated a hazard site, I can imagine they'd have been very thoroughly inventoried by outside agencies in that wake, and here Cisco is creating tech weaponry beyond anything ever invented. Eobard is plenty pissed when Cisco creates a situation that draws the wrong attention to his carefully constructed manipulation of S.T.A.R. Labs. The explosion was planned, the hazard designation was part of the cover, but anyone snooping around later stealing stuff that could come back to bite was most definitely not wanted in Eobard's master plan. I'm kind of getting the feeling here that the reason Eobard never made the place more secure was because it makes a good cover if the Lab is assumed to be so crippled that it's not dangerous at all. Eobard put Cisco in a lead position because he was easy to control.







One note I feel the need to make in particular- If Eobard ever treated Caitlin as rough as he did Cisco, Caitlin would be gone. I don't think we ever see Eobard really knuckle down on Cisco like that in front of other people, and Cisco presumably keeps much of this to himself out of guilt or something. Yes, this dynamic can be blown off on Eobard's end as 'parental', but it was also very telling. When Eobard later tells Cisco he'd shown him what it was like to have a son, I'm pretty sure there was no love lost. Psychopathic murderers don't have a clue what that even means, and it definitely showed. There is no compassion whatsoever in this moment.







Cisco had the capability within him to bring Eobard down early on if he'd only known who he was. Eobard wisely kept Cisco feeling emotionally vulnerable on purpose as part of his long game. It's funny Eobard got so attached to Flash through hate, but had so little feeling for Cisco that he killed him without an eyeblink. I can imagine Cisco may have somehow felt this weird void between them at times and not known what to do with it.

Quick jaunt into alt Earths. Harry on Earth 2 pretty much keeping pace with Eobard's developmental timeline of S.T.A.R. Labs is incredulous but handy. Either that is a writing problem, or it's a shrug off, a plot device. I take my TV viewing seriously, so I almost immediately assumed that Harry would be another form of evil or even just mean, not because of Thawne in any way, but because he was faster on his timeline and a bit more ego fail from selfish orientation than our original Wells on Earth 1. Remember, the accelerator explosion was stepped up on Earth 1 when Eobard showed up, moving the timeline up by several years. If Eobard had NOT done that, Harry would have lost everything to Zoom and the other metas he himself created in his own hubris because what created breaches on Earth 1 would never have happened. Now, to be fair, that is from Harry's motivation developing the way it did after losing Tess in his life, so he's obsessed to the point of neglecting responsibility. His team left him after the explosion. He had no one but himself to blame and to try to fix things. However, it's really interesting that Eobard is essentially his unwitting contemporary. Can't help wondering what Eobard ever thought of that, or did he even waste his time thinking on that one? I'm sure I've missed hints that I'll pick up on in this rewatch. Eobard seems pretty single sighted, which is actually probably normal for his pathological psychotic interpretation of genius. Anyway, whatever the backstory, you can see after season 1 how difficult it is for Cisco to work with Harry when he shows up. There is a similar lack of relationship development for awhile that makes everything super awkward.

You guys didn't just see me unglue a bunch of sticky rice I forgot about.





Ok, back to Cisco. Season 1 Cisco knows his own genius, but he's still 'young', not self confident enough to take proper responsibility or stand up for his decisions and actions as he is later in the series. He's a wandering high IQ waif who Eobard snaps up after S.T.A.R. Labs is already established. Cisco winds up displacing Eobard's favorite brainchild, and from my point of view, it's because Cisco is also easily emotionally manipulated the same way Caitlin is, as we can see during Eobard and Harry episodes where they both intimidate him. Cisco has his own demons, wrestling with inner guilt and self inflicted judgments, so even the slightest emotional reward is going to easily affect him. Yes, he does step up and rescue Barry against his own rogue tech, the cold gun, but we don't get to see how Eobard feels about this or whether he even knows about it after the crabbing out he did. Is this the first time Cisco and Caitlin created a workaround without their Dr. Wells being involved? Eobard is very unhappy about that cold gun showing up in his lab, of course, BUT in the bigger picture beyond that, I'm not seeing Eobard giving a rat's ass about it one way or another. (I hate to shrug this off as a writing problem.) As long as that cold gun doesn't screw his own ultimate plan, he could care less what happens to it. Apparently, as far as we are aware, Cisco and Caitlin either don't seem to question this problematic divergence, or they are already so used to keeping their own secrets that they team up and continue to keep more secrets together, apart from Eobard's agendas. If Eobard is noticing this at all, we aren't seeing yet that this bothers him. On the side he's busy incorporating Joe into the overall picture, using Joe to motivate Barry under Eobard's control, and he's had Cisco and Caitlin under his thumbs for so long, maybe he isn't worried about them possibly turning on him down the road. After all, they are expendable.

And that is where our heads need to be before we get to season 2, where Caitlin and Cisco have realized how truly expendable they were, which I'm sure was a jolt and will take time to process. As for Eobard Thawne, he seems very capable of adapting to and incorporating pop up situations into his overall plan, so his evil IQ is probably way higher than several alt-earth Dr. Wells put together, who all seem to get amusingly stuck in their own perspectives. We have to remember, though, that Eobard genetically enhanced himself with original Wells' IQ and memories along with the new body, which would probably be quite the discussion if anyone out there in youtube were to feel up to it (and I have yet to run into. Wonder if Eobard could outthink the Thinker, DeVoe. Alas, we may never know.) (Remember, Eobard loops back into existence, but I'm not going there yet.)

Time to take a break! Have some after dinnerthink brainmints. I couldn't decide what to throw out, so I just left them all in. Have a great week.

[Pinky]

Dissertations Galore- When your Eobard 101 post turns into grad level studies

Originally posted on pinky blog.










Disclaimer-
Laptop and phone screencaps used in not for profit blog episode and character reviews and film study. Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."






The very first thing I want to be clear about during my The Flash rewatch review is that I'm only reviewing the Arrowverse film version. The second thing I want to express is that it's nearly impossible (for me) to simply review this without recognizing a few background sources that further explain story history, since there are so many nods in the TV show to past storyline incarnations, not to mention that they plunk us unawares right into the middle of Eobard's timeline already in progress because the show is filmed from Barry's point of view.

For instance, this fingersnap you see in the show alludes back to a whole story arc about being able to create shockwaves, essentially making Eobard as powerful as a bomb being detonated.







That being said, if you are completely new to The Flash, the TV series does very well as a standalone story arc, and that is what I'm looking at. Also, that being said, once you get curious and ask something as benign as What about Eobard's original origin before all the timelines started changing?, like I did, don't worry, I'll be linking you up because this guy is so messed up there is no way anyone can NOT get lost in that little trail down the ultimate rabbit hole. This is what happens when a show opens up with such a complex character with so much history but not explaining any of it, although, to be fair, this TV series does just fine with it if you don't ask.








I've been #TeamWells from the gitgo, but I need to clarify that as well. I was more like #TeamEvilWells but I just didn't know back then I'd need to differentiate from more Wells incarnations showing up. So basically at the core, I'm a Thawne fan (I always seem to root for the baddies) even before I knew that was actually Thawne. More precisely, I'm an Eobard Thawne fanand I stuck to it once it all sorted out, except that never showed up in hashtags. While other fans went meme crazy, I went into a deprivation tank to think it through.

click meme for fun

Anyway, once you start in on this particular character history, you almost need to precision pinpoint what actual incarnation you make camp with because the fanbase has so incorporated the broad spectrum of Eobards and Thawnes popping up like Gremlins. And now that being said, I don't care what form Eobard is in, I'm a fan. Thawne is Thawne is Thawne. And that is where #TeamWells got a little murky, because dang it, they just kept showing up. I just shook my head and walked off from that one and then came back to it later because I liked Harry being grumpy, but that's off the subject now.







And THAT being said (omg where does this stop), one thing we eventually come to realize (or find out if you catch the crossovers) is that Eobard literally absorbed all of original Harrison Wells' memories and education when he hijacked his DNA structure, jacking up his own already very high IQ, so as evil geniuses go, this one is practically unstoppable, and he's easily bored enough to make things very difficult for a great many people when he's not busy obsessing over the Flash.







Why in the world is he so obsessed? Where did this even start? (I know right, I can't help it.)

You will get absolutely dizzy reading all this. Basically, between all the Eobard origin rewrites over the years and the countless timeline changes, canon is pretty shredded.

Eobard Thawne wikipedia

Eobard Thawne in the DC Database

Eobard Thawne comic book on TV Tropes

Eobard Thawne (Arrowverse) on wikipedia

Eobard Thawne Arrowverse wiki

So, Imma let Eobard-in-Wells sum up the very scant information we can still go with in the show.

And if that "it doesn't matter" is still leaving you throwing things at walls, here is a very cool easy to take in origin synopsis from Nerdgasm for those of us who just can't let it go. This will save your sanity. You're welcome.

Getting back to the TV series, those of us tweeting along with the scheduled live events as they rolled out were in for shockers, reveals, and surprises, and we were definitely not expecting Wells to be Thawne. I mean, we started catching on, yeah, but I don't think anyone really guessed that during the very first couple of episodes. Wells wasn't in the original comics and seemed like a sidebar, so once the hints started leaking out, we got those arm hair goosebumps and I gotta say, it was very tense by the time Barry arrived to the reveal. I was super tense.

click for article not the original reveal

So let's talk about Eobard Thawne from the TV series perspective, since we can't really nail down a whole lot on his motivation. Who is this guy? Aside from finding out later on that he's a psychotic body snatcher obsessed with the Flash, he seems like a pretty normal guy. We know he is a scientist who owns a particle accelerator that backfired into his ruin when a pipeline explosion killed a few people and likely beset agencies of every kind onto S.T.A.R. Labs and the accelerator beneath it being labeled a hazardous site. (If you're curious about what that might entail, you can wander off into hazard classification, like I did.) Dr. Wells didn't earn that hazard designation lightly, and as I've hinted before, Eeobard likely planned that out so he could use a locked down 'useless' building as a lair while he trained Barry to be the Flash.







Part of the reveals are very quietly done, like if you are paying attention, you catch on to the clues. One dot-connect you kind of figure out on your own later is that one of the reasons Dr. Wells (Eobard) doesn't socialize or hang out on any level beyond actual work is because too many clues could be given away. For instance, I had written

His focus is so intent that he doesn't make friends or have a social life, and everyone is surprised when he knows which wing of the mall the Big Belly Burger is in. I get the idea that he lurks alone and everyone is so used to it that he comes and goes whenever without question.

When the show spells out how much Barry has to eat as a Speedster so he won't faint all over the place, and then later reveals another speedster, you might think about Thawne lurking around the lab in a wheelchair having to sneak out and eat like Barry does. One of the we've known this guy for years and never knew this dichotomies is that he's never seen eating at Big Belly Burger, yet he knows exactly where it is and everyone is surprised. Eobard probably doesn't dare let anyone get any closer to him socially than actually working or it wouldn't take them long to figure out he's a very unusual person. That lends to all kinds of wondering how one would manage handling that kind of sneaky challenge. Thawne can't just hide food around the lab because they'd find it. Cisco even mentioned doing an inventory at one point. Finding out later how fast Thawne actually was, one has to wonder how he kept up his speed strength without anyone ever noticing. Keep this in the back of your mind.







In episode 1.11 we see Pied Piper attack Dr. Wells in his home. This is the only time we see what we assume to be Harrison Wells' house. It is in title, of course, but it is likely not the original house from before Tess died in the accident. Dr. Wells had told Joe that he couldn't go back to the lab after Tess died and had to start over, so it's a pretty sure bet Thawne also sold off the house and got another one. It's a very nice house, befitting the elite. The details in that home confirm an extremely picky person who doesn't hold back from the very best that he believes he deserves. Does he go home like that a lot? Apparently he's got a life away from S.T.A.R. Labs, and Hartley knew where that house was. No one else ever seems to have bothered to go dig Wells out of his cave and drag him out into the sunlight outside of the lab, so that house is the perfect base to recluse in while he probably secretly speed lurks all over town and beyond, spying on people and getting to know everything about everyone and all their buildings and enterprises and habits.

So basically, as your basic character goes, Dr. Wells is initially passed off on us as nobody important enough to actually develop through the story, except that lack of development is hiding the biggest reveal in the entire story. We know *nothing* about Dr. Wells excepting through Thawne's narrative of him, a pretend life he's playing out while he very patiently keeps pacing out his goals toward the main goal. The prize.










Thawne wants to go home. Ok, he wants to kill the Flash, too, but he wants to make sure he can get back to his own time and access his own levels of sciency tech again before he does that.






And since I bring up wanting to kill Flash, yes, that's ultimately where this is heading, so I'm about to rip that can of worms open and look closer at Thawne's crazy obsessive mind. Let's think about a few other things besides hiding the amount of food he was eating that Thawne had to stay on top of in order to accomplish the main two goals in his long game besides faking not being able to walk past Dr. Caitlin Snow for years in a close working relationship. Having the super focus to not get caught deviating out of character over every little movement made Thawne especially dangerous. For a genius speedster, having to pretend to be so slow and technologically facepalm with so much riding on staying focused on his hidden purpose for Barry was probably the very fuel that kept his passion alive for so long. He hated every minute of it, and hated Barry all the more for having to go through it.

By the time Eobard Thawne got stuck in Barry Allen's time, he had already been searching for him for years. Let's take a look at that.

• Eobard longs to be as cool as the Flash, to be the Flash. He spends years studying how to be as great as the Flash, to even exceed the Flash.
• Eobard, being both highly gifted and psychotic (unable to empathize), went to great lengths to set up and create situations that allowed him to mimic shining as the Flash. He played a dual role of both mysterious evil and heroic savior.
• Eobard spent years looking for the Flash and fighting with the Flash when he found him in order to prove he was better than the Flash.
• Eobard finally found out Flash's birth name, but when he ran through time to kill him and prevent him from even becoming the Flash at all, he burned out and got stuck and then had to spend 15 years recreating the Flash to help him solve the problem he created for himself.
• After several timeline changes and other adventures, Eobard spent another 15 years in prison, the last minutes of which he figured out how to torture the Flash some more while the Flash was accidentally setting him free, via Flash's daughter.

That is likely at least 40+ years of obsession with the Flash, as Eobard's linear life experience goes. Despite no one else around him having even a fraction of that experience back with him, he knows Flash and his whole network of friends and family and eventually his entire history, to the point of becoming his mentor and even his friend, at least in Barry's eyes. Eobard worked very hard on the dichotomy of being powerful behind seeming harmless.

Hiding who he was through 40 years was second nature to Eobard Thawne. Pretending to be someone he was not is the basis for his entire obsession. Being an imposter is one thing, but obsessively stalking and faking for 40 years with intent to murder is quite another. Since we find out later there are dopplegangers on other Earths in the Multiverse, I'm unclear whether Eobard has dopplegangers or whether he's unique in all the Multiverse, or all the copies of him are created time remnants from timeline changes, both by himself and Barry. If Eobard can cross the Multiverse at will, what would stop him from accessing other Harrison Wells? He could keep ramping up his experiences, memories, and education exponentially. Is he a serial bodysnatcher? I don't think this is ever quite asked (or answered), although possibly touched on in one of the crossovers, "Arrow" Crisis on Earth-X, Part 2.

If Eobard is a serial bodysnatcher, he could be far older than we can imagine, spending even more years running across the Multiverse, and up and down and back and forth through timelines. He can grab fresh Harrison bodies as needed. Why Harrison Wells in particular? Probably because over time, Team Flash had grown fond of Harrisons in general, and Eobard knew it made Flash sick to see him in another Harrison body, meaning he had killed another Harrison Wells to get it. He'd get to see Flash grind his teeth every time he showed up in Harrison's face.

Perhaps the best way to see it all is through Barry's more straightforward in the moment, so I may work on that next. I need way more think time before I try tackling any more Eobard Thawne, because I can't seem to stay in the episodes rolling out without diving back into Thawne history on the webs. In the meantime, if you're looking for tips... XD or not.

This is my fave Reverse Flash fanvid ever.

[Pinky]

thought experimentation- How Far Can the Hero's Journey Go?

Originally published on pinky blog.







Yeah, no, I'm not done with the Thawne thing. *somebody just squeed* (I looked up past tense of squee. Got it right! lol)

I'm a Joseph Campbell fan from way back, was one of the first jumping on board many years ago and even attended a special guest talk at my college when his book The Power of Myth first came out. I'm about to stick a toe out past the Hero's Journey motif (click that, very cool) into application. This might be important.

Of course, anyone would jump on Barry Allen going through the hero's journey, but what about Eobard Thawne? He wants to be the hero.

In a world of heroes vs villains, one could jump into all kinds of psyche analysis, behavioral assessment, character history, and I'm going to skip all that. Not where I'm going at all. I'm sure this has been wrung to death over the decades of comics.

In my last The Flash review post regarding Eobard Thawne's many rewrites I kept asking, "Why in the world is he so obsessed? Where did this even start?"

This actually starts with the writers. Let's look at this conundrum they seem to be having with all the origin rewrites.

Defining a hero's journey gone hopelessly south to the point of nastiest villain of all time is a very fun thought experiment. Who can resist? What the writers are creating are simulations that they let run to see where they go. Granted, these stories come from within themselves, which is fine. The whole point of this exercise in experimentation is to discover new knowledge about ourselves and the universe we live in. Oh, crap, did I just go metaphysical on this?

Trying to define a journey with no idea of the destination leads to many simulations. We want to know how something could or will play out, so we mock it up in our minds and follow it to some kind of conclusion. In the instance of Eobard Thawne, we begin with a few character rules, and one of those is that this guy is hopelessly psychotic. He cannot feel empathy or remorse, so he tragically misinterprets what a hero's ultimate job is. He attempts to set up situations in which he is the hero, because he wants so badly to be one, but he fails by default to be able to see that he's automatically slotting himself as the villain to begin with. The shock of discovering he can't help being the villain hits him later on, at which point he goes through his own brand of 'dark night of the soul' and then emerges having embraced his destiny as a super villain.

The writers don't venture into those murky depths as bluntly as I did, although their storylines are fantastic. Eobard truly struggles with who he is for many years. And if he is an antithesis, he is by definition completely dependent on that enemy who is the real hero in order to be who he himself is. We see this all the time in comics, beautifully constructed by comic artists as tragedian theater.

The beauty of the Eobard Thawne story is that it can go on and on without resolution. The problem with the Eobard Thawne story is that it never reaches a satisfactory conclusion. Why is this? Because the writers and likely all the readers and viewers are stuck in third density thinking.

The hero's journey is all well and good, but it's a bit sterile as a program. It seems to have an inherent loop counter that grinds the story back to start over and over with no way to resolve. (At least one of you went very pale with the thought Oh no, she's about to ruin it all. No, I'm not. Be patient and open your mind. You, too, can jump into the Eobard journey experimentation!)

If we broaden our perspective, we might be able to better grasp what the conundrum really is, both for the writers and for Eobard.

Third density is our perspective right now on earth. It isn't the same as 3 dimensional. It's not a physical property, more like an awareness mode. If you are mentally blocking with Wait, wut???, you can stop here and go read Ascending the Densities of Consciousness. If you want to keep reading this without stopping, I'll try to be gentle.

In third density, our awareness is such that we have a sense of autonomous self in relation to other selves, and each one of us eventually asks the ultimate question- What is my purpose here in this life? It doesn't matter what your belief system is or whether you are a good person or a bad person, it simply just happens to all of us sooner or later unless you've acquired some form of injury that disables this part of your existential awareness.

So Eobard is consumed with his purpose to the point of going to extraordinary lengths finding ways to accentuate his abilities. He goes out of his way to create scenarios upon which to apply those abilities. He experiments with his purpose. He tries to solve the problem of himself without being aware for years that is what he is doing.

After Eobard's dark night of the soul, wherein he comes to grip with his behavior defining who he ultimately is, he accepts and embraces that he plays the role of villain. This is fourth density thinking. We don't need to be aware of it for it to happen. Fourth density is aligning oneself to a side of duality. We can term it good and evil, but the easiest way to to define it simply might be saying we are either in service to self, or service to others. Both can blur the lines of good and evil, which is why it's easier to use in a thought experiment.

Eobard is definitely in service to self. He doesn't play hero in the beginning to actually save people or be the good guy, he plays hero for attention. He very much needs validation as a third density being that he matters more than the genetics that originally defined him, since he's a future designer baby. He creates situations over and over where he plays out making a difference, although the actual differences that he makes at first are catastrophic soul failures, if you will. If we allow spiritual definition into his soul searching for who he really is at his core, he dismally fails the humanitarian award. He literally lives the duality and can't understand it until he realizes and accepts his purpose is service to self.

Fourth density is not the end of growth awareness. Once a person embraces a side (and here every Star Wars fan will click and go Oh, yeah...), extreme imbalance can happen, for both good and evil.

An example of 'good' imbalance would be service to others to the extreme end of neglect to self, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Intentions may be good, but they can precariously collapse if the person playing out those intentions experiences a cascade of life fails resulting from the neglect of self.

An example of 'bad' imbalance would be service to self to the extreme of exhausting all non-self resources, resulting in multiple fails that collapse upholding service to self. You can't continue being a physical, emotional, or spiritual leach once you've decimated your supply chain.

Fifth density awareness growth is when a person who has chosen a side in the duality realizes that they need to find a balance with that other side in order to thrive. This means a 'good' person, while focusing on their service to others, takes the time for self care and revitalization. It means a 'bad' person, while focusing on their service to self, creates positive give and take relationships with others that keep the supply chain healthy.

Eobard is struggling with learning fifth density. He's kind of stuck in fourth density duality, learns that he can't really extinguish the Flash from ever existing in the first place without exterminating himself, and goes on from that point with his neverending crusade to make Flash as miserable as possible by bringing harm onto his family and friends and redirecting the good Flash does into calamity after all.

I don't think the writers are quite aware they are struggling with this, as well. They do a great job of it in their simulations through comics and TV shows, of course, but if they could really think this through, they could have Eobard mature even further into being an even better evil genius.

Let's look at this a little more slowly. Eobard reasons that he must recreate Barry Allen becoming the Flash in order to get what he wants. He's doing this begrudgingly. He doesn't want to create a healthy balance at all. Several times in the Arrowverse version TV series we see him longing to kill Barry and coming pretty close to doing it, and the only thing stopping him is that he won't get what he wants in the end. So he stays firmly focused on what he wants, not what anyone else needs.

If Eobard could ascend into fifth density thinking, he might be able to reason that a healthy happy Barry aka Flash might be more fun in the long run to harass. Once Eobard outs himself, he essentially gives Barry the power to choose fifth density thinking over him.

Let's give it a second for that to sink in.

Barry grows spiritually with Eobard as the catalyst. He learns fourth density awareness as he is learning to be the Flash, and he advances into fifth density thinking after Eobard has used Barry's daughter (to her expense) to free himself from a death penalty. Barry is able to rise above the duality because Eobard so consistently shoves that duality in his face. He'd like to kill Eobard back, a very natural and powerful human reaction, but he refrains from slipping back into third density awareness and remains firmly on one side of the duality. Once his daughter's timeline erases her, Barry launches into fifth density knowing that in order to find his own karmic balance on his hero's journey, he can't become like Eobard and simply cave to emotionally reacting.

When Eobard can no longer pull Barry's string, as it were, he also faces a new consciousness awareness. Can a psychopath become cognizant of fifth density decision making? Could Eobard possibly forge ahead as a villain keeping a balance? By sixth season in The Flash TV series, Eobard winds up trapped inside Nash and then expelled by Team Flash. Eobard at that point is an energy soul without a body. We have no idea if and when he'll be back and how they'll explain that, but he's certainly not dead.

When Eobard took over Nash's body and kept trying to kill, he was acting out his natural psychopathic impulses in fourth density. Is he capable of ascending to fifth density at all? I believe so. What would that mean in terms of his character development?

This is where anyone can continue the thought experiments. Eobard has essentially created himself to be a god, he's a super genius, and he could easily just wipe everyone out with a fingersnap at any time through the entire series, so... Why isn't he doing that?

Eobard's original refraint was that extinguishing the Flash meant extinguishing himself. He doesn't have that problem in the 6th season in Nash's body. He simply wants them all dead by now. He's done with this whole game he set up. After decades of his entire life revolving around Barry Allen, he's done with all of it.

In that mindset, what comes next for Eobard Thawne?

*millions of fans all over the world gleefully rub their hands over a macro burst of story ideas*

Waiting patiently for season 7.

[Pinky]

In which Matt also gets to do a TeamFlash diagram

Originally published on pinky blog.





What we never saw about Eobard working out how to speed eat his way through the Big Belly Burger kitchen filling orders in progress.

It's tempting to flesh out a fanfic about Eobard's typical night out after work at S.T.A.R. Labs before he heads home. It helps that I've worked in the food industry, lol.

Ok, not really going to do that. Can you imagine the ice cream headaches though. Because speed eating.

Before he was a cool supervillain, Eobard flopped around just like Barry. Something to think about.

Lotta respect to Matt Letscher for attempting to asplain his character.

And seriously, this is why you be nice to your ancestors.

If you wonder what my title is about, I am known to rant about Team Flash diagraming. You can see my original idea to pull all my The Flash rants together on pinky blog at all my flash rants, and the culmination of blog salvage and continuing rewatch posts at SyfyDesigns.

Wouldn't it be cool if CW did a Reverse Flash prequel series with Matt Letscher?