If There’s One Thing Barry Writers Love, It’s Themes Of Neurodivergence And Being Othered

So you guys remember how Barry created the speedforce, right? And how it expanded out through time and space from the point of origin of one Barry Allen? And how his movement generates more speedforce and causes it to expand? And how he's called 'the avatar of the speedforce'? And how when Grodd drained the speedforce out of Barry, he couldn't fully do it no matter how hard he tried because there was always speedforce in his cells? And how Barry screamed in pain when Wally fractured the speedforce but Wally was fine? Or how Barry called down the speedforce to strike Wally and give him powers?

Do you remember how Wally mainlines the speedforce? How Wally has the strongest speedforce connection of any speedster? How Wally has the strongest relationship with Barry out of any speedster? How Wally is able to do things with the speedforce that other speedsters could never do by focusing on his love?

Do you ever think about how Bart became the speedforce? How it's in his blood? How he doesn't have as strong of a connection with the speedforce as Wally does, but he's still stronger than literally any other speedster because it's his birthright? About how Barry barely knows Bart but he loves him anyway because he's his grandson?

Sometimes I think about how the people that Barry loves are favored by the speedforce and how the people Barry loves love are as well.

been seeing a lot of this lately and all i gotta say is what the fuck

A03 this, Wattpad that.

What about my hyper specific self insert maladaptive daydreams?

Being obsessed with your own OCs but literally never creating any art or content for them is such a curse. You'll be like "this reminds me of blorbo from my head :)", and everyone else will just be like "? who thef uck"

Septembaaa

Oh unhinged Barry Allen... you both terrify me and delight me in equal measures. You are everything to me.

Love me a guy who says "fuck the timeline, I'm getting my son back"

I mean...he... uhhh.. should probably stop fucking with time because he's on attempt #97 to save Wally and he keeps failing and it's making him insane and distorting his body and slowly turning him into the monster that kills Wally in the first place buuuuuuut still... I'm here for the energy of it. "Love is the opposite of choice" and "But for Wally? Anything." are absolutely VIBES.

This is an entire dad. This is an unhinged overpowered father.

shoes

Scrolling through AO3 and saw something I wasn't expecting: Hal and Jason fics. And usually, the Jason Todd-ification of DC fandom is not my cup of tea. But. There's an interesting concept there. Just not one I've ever personally seen addressed.

And that's:

Hal actually fucking did it.

Every single thing Jason fantasized about at the height of his wrath? Hal actually did it. Hal killed his mentor and his tormentor, Sinestro, with his own hands. And he decimated the friends that didn't stop his tragedy, killed the comrades that didn't care for his grief, and reduced his all-mighty masters to nothing. He actually ripped Henshaw to shreds.

Hal is the dog that bit back. The dog that not only bit the hand that fed, but went for the throat next.

Hal is the League member that went bad. There's many parallels there to Jason's narrative, should one want to look for them.

Moreover, Hal's pain became a palpable, all-consuming thing that devoured everything. Hal's tragedy, his grief and his rage and his pain, was so great it caused a literal Crisis (the second crisis ever! Out of only seven!), tore reality apart, erased entire timelines. It had long-lasting effects on the entire universe for years to come. (On a more personal note for Jason: It hurt Batman. On a deep, psychological level.)

It mattered.

But it also did not help. It didn't make Hal feel better. It didn't fix anything, despite how desperately Hal believed it would. It, in fact, made everything worse. Hal regretted all of it.

And I think Jason Todd reckoning with that tale would actually be a genuinely interesting way to explore his character.

I'm not caught up enough to know whether these two characters have ever interacted in canon, but I think I'm well-read enough to say: probably not. And if they did, probably only superficially.

But I think there is room for a very interesting conversation between these two characters.

Hal being basically the embodiment of Vengeance for a time is also an interesting element, if the timelines were shifted around so that Jason crawled out the grave before Hal's rebirth. Like. There's a foundation for one hell of an interesting dynamic here.