ships thing: dctv, go go go!
otp - I’m really invested in the little Island Family Oliver had with Shado and Slade before everything became terrible, so Oliver/Shado/Slade or Oliver/Slade is a thing I really like. I’m adamantly opposed to anything that would break up WestAllen in like a main-universe kind of way. And I’m never gonna be over Merlance (Tommy/Laurel) ever for some reason.
favourite canon pairing - Olicity? But, like, I probably have a longer WestAllen tag. I feel like I’m invested in both of them fairly equally but am more actively into Arrow as an overall show and fandom simply because I’m more saturated in it if nothing else. I really like Olicity, but I don’t list it as an OTP because it’s one of those things that I feel like works now and should work and continue to work, but it wouldn’t have been, like, the only endgame for either of them and I feel like that is one of the things I like about it.
worst pairing ever - I remember being super uncomfortable with Barry/Linda Park. I’m very behind on The Flash, but I still cringe when I think about the tension between Linda and Iris and how uncomfortable Barry was at the thought of actually being intimate with her. I tried to like her because I don’t like disliking characters who aren’t evil, especially women and girls, but ugh my skin crawls.
guilty pleasure pairing - I guess Oliver/Slade except I’m super serious about it. I also used to ship an OT3 of the OTA but Diggle has been pretty happily married and settled for quite some time now, so the occasional vibes I get about that I guess count. Barry/Kara because I absolutely don’t want to break up Barry/Iris for any reason whatsoever, but I would be absolutely thrilled with some type of healthy polyamory. I just feel like I can’t ever read that though unless it’s written for me because it seems so fraught with potential pitfalls. As far as a ship that makes me feel guilty that is probably it, but I am 1000% here for their canonical platonic thing. Also, for the same reason with Diggle, this year in particular John/Laurel has occurred to me for complicated reasons, and I kind of like it? But also Diggle is happy with Lyla and uh... yeah.
a pairing you want to see more - Oliver/Shado/Slado, Oliver/Slade, and I have never seen it even once but I want to play with John/Laurel, Tommy/Laurel, Sara/Nyssa (in canon specifically), Barry/Iris/Eddie Thawne
that pairing everyone likes but you’re like “lol no” - I hate SnowBarry, like, a lot and tumblr’s suggested posts suggest it to me all the time for some reason. It’s more a meta reason than anything else - I’m usually into multishipping and live and let whatever but it bothers me. Even though I’m very into the DCTV crossovers and Arrow more as a standalone show because I’ve seen way more of it and so on, when The Flash first came out I was super excited about trying to keep up with it as it aired. And I did... for a while, but then the various fandom things that just were flat-out racist and/or blind-as-bats and so on about Iris and Barry/Iris’s canonical inevitability and how it created an environment in which WestAllen fans and just Iris on her own fans had to almost take the defensive positive forever (in a way that still is unfortunate in other ways) seems to be highly connected with people who preemptively shipped SnowBarry. And it is a double-standard that a lot of us preemptively shipped Barry/Iris from before the pilot was officially released because mythologically WestAllen is not only canon but kind of vital to the plot of The Flash. Like, one could get into how Oliver/Dinah (Laurel) never gets actual play on television adaptations as an endgame for... some weird reason like it’s cursed for it to ever work out in a palpable way, but WestAllen is different. WestAllen working out, rough patches and all, was kind of a foregone conclusion because their being best friends and family and having children together was part of the plot that everyone reasonably anticipated with Barry’s super-speed also giving way to time and parallel dimension travel and so on. The people who preemptively shipped SnowBarry were totally going on aesthetics (*cough*) and there was really, truly no way to genuinely argue otherwise. I could see little moments of chemsitry with them in S1, but here’s the thing... even friends have chemistry or they wouldn’t be friends. And I just... cannot ship it, won’t ship it, and it creeps me out. I don’t know if “everyone” likes it, but it’s common enough that I know some of my fandom friends at least entertain it as a multishipping option, but because of the environment that existed in the build-up to Season 1 of The Flash, I just cannot regardless of whether there are some people who are doing it in a multishipping way fairly innocently who got into it later.
favorite non-romantic pair - The OTA even though part of it is now romantic was always one of my favorite things. Barry, Kara, and Oliver in the crossovers. I really like Oliver and either of the Lance sisters as friends after being lovers as a specific narrative thing I like even though it got fumbled and rarely gets addressed. Oliver and William. Gosh I can’t list all of this. I like ALL the non-romantic stuff.
Give me another fandom for the ships thing?