i don’t understand the point of the upcoming dub-con kiss with barry & shapeshifter!caitlin. the writers have made so clear they’re not gonna go there…so what’s the narrative purpose? caitlin finally marries her returned-from-the-dead fiance in the next few episodes; barry “let’s start doing” allen is still tragically pining over iris. the show’s big dramatic relationship arcs have been telegraphed from day one, and haven’t shifted course at all.
the ship-baiting is tiring & pointless, but i wouldn’t care…except that EVERY SINGLE WOMAN who interacts significantly with barry & isn’t his mother & isn’t a villain, has to be positioned as a love interest, or sexualized in some way. i’m not saying he shouldn’t have love interests, but there’s paucity of regular/recurring female characters to begin with, and i don’t see why his interaction with all of them must be sexualized or romanticized.
even caitlin, the ONE female character who’s not remotely positioned like a love interest for barry, gets awkwardly shoehorned into being half-dressed that one time & “u deserve a peek” & now this dub-con shapeshifter kiss.
it just seems like an extension of what arrow does, with oliver banging his way through every single woman who gets within five feet of him & isn’t related to him or already entangled w/another member of the main cast. except, of course, barry isn’t anything like oliver.
barry “what other girls” allen, barry “i loved you before i even knew what love meant” allen, barry “i never stopped thinking about you” allen…that guy is not a womanizer, and you can’t make him one without undercutting his characterization & making him really gross and insincere.
but i guess heroism, kindness, devotion, etc aren’t sexy enough on their own. iris hasn’t returned his affection, and he can’t womanize because that fucks up his characterization, so barry’s masculinity and desirability must be upheld some other way. so, all the women have to throw themselves at him, even if it’s to detriment of their characterization.
meanwhile, as everyone keeps pointing out, cisco’s desirability is made into a constant goddamned joke. the one time that someone expresses interest in cisco, he and barry are both SHOCKED because she’s into cisco and not barry……and of course, she wasn’t really interested in cisco. she was just trapping him.
wells doesn’t have any current love interests, but his desirability is never outright mocked, and he gets a tragic romantic backstory. (same for henry allen, obviously.) in contrast, we don’t know a damn thing about mama west, and the one time that somebody flirts with joe, he’s incredibly uncomfortable and the whole thing is played off as a joke. unlike cisco, joe’s desirability isn’t mocked, but he’s still de-romanticized, de-sexualized.
