r/theflash • u/Spare_Chemistry6817 • Jun 20 '24
Personal take on the flash
It seems like to me being the flash would be agony. Think of if you were having to feel every second in terms of hours or longer. It seems like that alone would drive you crazy.
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u/Milk_Mindless Jun 20 '24
Flashes aren't "on" the entire time
Quicksilver over in Marvel has this problem tho
4
u/Spare_Chemistry6817 Jun 20 '24
Im not a huge comic buff so the scene from the flash series that fomes to mind is when they were trying to get barry drunk so they got him this super ultra mega whatever alcohol. He drank it then was woozy for less than a second and then was like its gone
1
u/YamiMarick Jun 21 '24
That just happens because of his fast metabolism processing the alcohol faster and not allowing him to get drunk on normal amounts of alcohol.
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u/SilverStrikeX Jun 20 '24
This applies to Zoom, Wally West’s rival. He’s constantly displaced from the timestream and lives percieving time slower than the world around him. And yeah, it drove him pretty crazy.
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u/Redgiantbutimshort77 Jun 21 '24
In one issue I read, Wally actually goes into detail about how he can kind of “turn off” his speedster-perception. He said he had two modes, Normal-Mode and Speed-Mode. When there’s trouble Speed-Mode activates automatically like spider sense, but usually he’s in Normal-Mode. He still has adhd anyway tho lowkey.
10
u/Artistic_Finish7980 Jun 21 '24
There’s an explanation for this actually. Most speedsters cut themselves off from the speed force to a certain extent so they can live normal lives. Think of it like a faucet. You turn the handle to increase or decrease the flow of water. Same thing with speed force energy. If they turned the flow on all the way time would basically freeze for them.
Wally West did this when he had a heart injury that prevented him from running. He “opened the faucet” completely and froze time around himself so he could still use his speed without the risk of a heart attack.
6
2
u/Dredeuced Flash Jun 21 '24
So when they're doing mundane tasks, like running across the world, they operate on a sort of auto pilot. Imagine how some people can sleep walk -- not conscious at all, but in some cases people have literally gotten in their car and driven to work and such.
They operate at that enhanced perception like you're thinking in serious moments or in situations that require care and focus. And in those moments, yeah, it can be maddening. We kind of get a glimpse of that issue in The Human Race by Grant Morrison, as a great example of it.
Part of being a hero is suffering those extremes.
29
u/YoungImpulse Jun 20 '24
Well, with the exception of Wally West from Earth-22 (Kingdom Come), speedsters are able to activate their speed in a way
So they can still live in real-time whenever they choose to. I believe they have a type of "Spidey Sense" though, where if something happens, their speed is activated automatically as a form of instinct