Spurious Claims

 That's Anthony Stewart Head holding a kitten.  You're welcome.
 BUFFY. BUFFY AND WILLOW.  THEY ARE BESTIES.
 This is my faaavorite icon I've made ever. It has something to do with the superhero pose Gwen is doing.
 Sisterly love!!  This is from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which I enjoyed muchly.
 Capt. Janeway, being a bamf.  I'm not actually up on VOY, but I've made a fuckload of icons for Janeway and for Kira in DS9.

If you're interested in more icons, you can find them at my Photobucket, which is not terribly well organized. <3
Feel free to take, use, whatever!  Please credit me if you do.

• Eye candy of at least two genders. Let's just be upfront about that. This show is allllllll about the eye candy.  It's the CW, what do you expect.  But what's even more impressive is that Stephen Amell, who plays the Green Arrow, is actually able to do some of the serious stuntwork that his character requires.  It's pretty neat.  That's him, below.  The poor man is half-naked in every episode.


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• Randomly cool actors, including John Barrowman, Alex Kingston (in a guest role), Summer Glau, Manu Bennett, and Colton Haynes (who is playing a character who is surprisingly likeable)


• It bears repeating: JOHN BARROWMAN.  John Barrowman plays a snarky asshole and makes faces at people like he's picturing them naked, as you can see:


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• Geek girl sidekick.  Have I mentioned that I have a Thing for geek girl sidekicks?  Oy vey. Gimme some Willow (BtVS), some Chloe (Smallville), some Gabrielle (Xena), some Hermione (HP).  I love those gals as much as the day is long.  This show has a geek girl sidekick named Felicity, and she is wonderful.  She also seems to be half of the fandom's most popular ship, so that's also cool.


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• MULTILINGUALNESS.  People bust out Mandarin, Russian, and the occasional Arabic in this show, and it is lovely.  I do not speak these languages, so I'm not clear on how precise the pronunciation is, but Amell does seem to put a lot of work into getting it as accurate as possible.  There is a scene where Amell's character and Summer Glau's character seduce each other in Russian and UNF.


• Some very cool lady characters, although they're not always centralized or valorized.  I've seen some disappointment about the way The Huntress was handled, for one, which is totally understandable.  But I am very invested in Black Canary here (see my flail below), and Moira Queen is a surprisingly interesting character who's often working in a morally grey area.  And Isabel Roshev, played by Summer Glau, is kind of wonderful.


• Unlike Barrowman, Summer Glau's character has a tendency to look at people like she's picturing their mutilated corpses squishing under her boot heel.  It's pretty hot, tbh.


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• Oliver/Diggle, because they are best bros and like to roll around on mats together and awkwardly talk about their feelings and they should have sweaty, angsty, macho sex.  I think slash fandom would have poured into this fandom if Diggle were either 1) white or 2) a twink, but he's neither of those things. He is a big, black, badass dude, and he needs to bend Oliver in half, like, pronto.  I mean, seriously, look at this man:


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• Oliver/Thea, because sibling incest is best!!


• And okay, let's be clear, I would also read any combinaton of Queencest at all.  Moira/Thea? Moira/Oliver?  I'm very sorry, but if Stephen Amell and Susanna Thompson want to convince us they're playing mother and son, then they need to stop eyefucking each other.


• Oliver/Felicity, because the fandom ships it, and so do I.  I am, in fact, writing O/F fuck-or-die at this very minute. It seemed like a good way to introduce myself.


• Felicity/Black Canary, because I don't know anything about comic!verse Canary, but she seems kind of queer and feminist and awesome in Arrow, and when she first met Felicity, she batted her eyelashes at her and cooed, "You're cute."  I JUST WANT HER TO SEDUCE FELICITY AND ALSO MARRY HER AND FOR THEM TO FIGHT CRIME TOGETHER.  ALL OF IT.


• Black Canary/Anybody tbh, because damn girl.


• She wears leather and pouts and has this "friend" named Sin with a punk aesthetic that you almost never see on CW shows:


• This is Sin.  Isn't she divine? *sighs longingly*  She's played by Bex Taylor-Klaus.  Actually this photo might be from the other show where Taylor-Klaus plays a queer punk street urchin (The Killing), but you get the idea.


• IN FACT.  Maybe Team Arrow should have a big orgy. Or conversely, just be a big pile of found-family!feelings together.  I will read fluffy domestic fics about Diggle/Felicity/Oliver(/Sarah/Sin) all day long.  LOOK AT THESE THREE.  THEY ARE BASICALLY ALREADY MARRIED:


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• Isabel Roshev/Conquering the World.  Isabel is Summer Glau's character, and I am kind of really into her.  She's unapologetic and a crazy good business woman and has sex when she wants to,and just tries really hard to be good at things. ALSO, and this cannot be overstated, she murmured some Russian in a sexy voice, and it was the best 4 seconds of my life. I want her and Oliver to be bros-with-benefits who respect each other and run a company together and maybe occasionally fuck when they're bored.  I am not sure this is going to happen. The show seems to want me to be suspicious of her, and it makes me sad.


• BARRY ALLEN/EVERYONE.  The motherfucking Flash, ya'll.  They've been subtly working up to his origin story for the whole first half of the second season, and I really, really liked it.  All of the cinematography devoted to Barry has a very classic, old-school superhero feel to it.  Also. He's an adorable, sassy, baby-faced twink in this canon, and I want him to bat his doe eyes at basically everyone.


• Apparently Barry's introduction may actually be a back-door pilot for his own show, so we'll see if that happens.

• Characters of color have a tendency to die or leave the show or be evil.  How novel.


• It's a pretty male-identified show.  Like, if we take a tally of the women with speaking parts in the show, Oliver and his best bro John have slept with all them except for the ones they're blood-related to.  And Felicity.  Naturally, this means that Oliver/Felicity is the fandom's favorite ship because she is LITERALLY THE ONLY WOMAN HE HASN'T SLEPT WITH.  Yet.  Ahem.  Laurel Lance is probably the most central female character, but her storylines are often tied to being a love interest or to being a victim.  That's not all that she is, of course; she has some cool stuff dealing with career and family.  Hopefully we get to see more of that, PARTICULARLY her relationship with her sister.  I really, really hope we get to see a sisterly reunion there, and not only because I <3 Sarah forever.


• At the end of the day, this is a very silly CW show, so you can't go in expecting a lot.  Luckily I love silliness.  Add that to the pretty and the multishipping, and I could hang out here all day.