TrueMyth

Francesca Buller (star Ben Browder's wife) was amazing on Farscape, although she tended to wear more and more awesome alien make-up for each character.

Oh, god, Marc is doubling down on his "feminist ideals" on Tumblr now.

I actually think Dinah's line was a clapback at Trump's infamous comments actually on the part of the writers, just like the fact that he's President in Doom World, too. It wanted to be, "Pussy grabs back, dumbass." But it was very poorly placed. I think it's a little crazy that Chase and Malcolm and everybody's mother can get into the GA "secret" lair, but taking the power out with an EMP apparently traps Oliver and Felicity. I'm looking forward to the next episode, but it would also be hilarious to have them exit using "one of the many emergency exits. See? I told you these would eventually come in handy!"

So hard to take seriously any media that calls him "Ollie."

I believed the same regarding Felicity laying low post-Cooper's death, and thought that meant a deliberately beneathe her IT job. However meeting Helix and incorporating the novel, I do think it may be possible that selling-out to any kind of corporate job was a kind of hiding out to a iconoclast hactivist like Ghost Fox Goddess, so maybe her position was higher up than we thought. I like the idea of Felicity receiving many offers of internships or jobs before she graduated and her being flattered but unsure while Cooper made fun of them for being for "the man" (of course, he was mostly jealous that he wasn't head hunted as aggressively). That makes her preppy look at the end of 3x05 have even more meaning for me. But I really have strayed into the realm of fanon here.

Did anyone ever write a Iris/Eddie/Olicity fic? Obviously a bit of a stretch, but we know Oliver is on Iris's list and Eddie's face at Felicity's trivia night dress cracked me up.

I think it's more that he thinks that's what shippers want. It's a go-to for "Happily Ever After." So yeah, he gets an Olicity question, he uses marriage as short hand for them being committed and happy, which is what he assumes shippers are looking for when they ask Olicity questions. Which, fair enough, maybe some are? I personally was very surprised that engagement was on the table in 4x01 and felt a bit robbed of the development. And now I really want their issues hashed out before any kind of marriage takes place.

Ha! You basically described my favorite Shakespeare ship, Beatrice and Benedict from "Much Ado About Nothing." Notice I say favorite ship, not story, because it really is one of his weaker narratives. Don John is horribly one dimensional. His plans really only almost work because everyone is so focused on trying to get B & B together. What Shakespeare gets right (besides the wonderful banter) is not dragging out the misunderstanding.

I'd assumed the dark eyeshadow in the trailer was because she was prepared to be wearing a mask... of course, they rarely show anyone in their grease paint after they come in from the field and Felicity doesn't appear to be wearing a mask for whatever infiltration is going down, so I'm likely totally off base.

Ah, I see. Chinese, for certain. I would have liked to see him developing language skills in Russian from the captives and guards in season four, too. I don't need much to hang my belief on. As you say, it's possible for him to develop these language skills on the island alone with all the people who stopped by.

The guy he interrogates for information says he had to be Chinese because his accent was perfect. I guess we can say it was the heat of the moment or that Oliver got that good at the interrogation type questions? It still requires more hand-waving than I like to go from that episode to Oliver's currently demonstrated proficiency.

And yet he has been written as fairly derpy with languages after season one. He is still learning basic words from the kid in Hong Kong after he has been living with the family for at least four months. Now Yao Fei and Shado probably spoke Mandarin (Did they? What did Shado's twin speak?), the people Oliver tortured for Waller were shown to speak English but I assume they spoke both dialects, and the Yamashiro family likely spoke Japanese at home, but I think it was Cantonese that Oliver is shown as stumbling over. Maybe he feigns misunderstanding to take the kid's mind off the danger, but it is not made clear. He never demonstrates proficiency with any Asian languages in season three, though that is clearly when he should have polished up. In Russia his poor accent is remarked on as a bit of a joke, though he could have started learning from Anatoly in season two and certainly had time to learn from Poppy in season four. I don't remember them playing his accent for yucks in the season two episode. Isn't Isabel a bit impressed with him even before the vodka? Sure, maybe Oliver's accent has improved over these past months along with his filleting technique. Maybe he brings a couple Rosetta Stone lessons along with the fake beard to the island, thus explaining the four/five month gap before he lights the signal fire. Maybe MG forgot that, as well as going dark and killer-y by the end of season five, there are actually a few other skills Oliver picked up.

Agreed as far as the original plan, but I do wish MG had internalized some of the subtleties. I'm still bummed about Oliver's failure to achieve fluent Cantonese or Madarin as they showed in season one. Over Tumblr he denied that was ever a skill of Oliver's. Sure, it is a complex language and most real people will not be fluent after five years of non-continuous use, but it was one of the things that made Oliver badass to me. I think MG's Oliver is much more of a dumb thug than he has been presented by others. While the continuity is there, it is weakened by poor attention from the show runner, so I understand if it feels like a retcon to some.

This Damian has never met Felicity, right? So I'd have to say we have Malcolm's mind to thank for leather bound Felicity.

I just had a (crazy?) idea. What if Vigilante is... Walter Steele? While we may assume that his absence from Thea's life stems from the often repeated idea that only the poor or stupid would still live in Star City at this point, what if Moira's death set him off on his rage spiral and training? He has the money for all that hardware. He is tall enough. The actor played a real badass on " Limitless." I'd prefer him to Pike. I miss Walter!

Ugh. It's like they want me not to watch.

Are you certain that MG didn't mean that it was hard to fit Thea into the narrative this season? As in they couldn't think of a good storyline for her? Smacks of poor writing, but I think that's how I understand his quote.

All this talk of the musical has made me go back and watch Xena's The Bitter Suite. Once More With Feeling was a lot more polished, but I love all the Tarot symbolism of the first Xena musical. And I find TV musicals that actually compose their own songs to be much more moving, even when some lines are clunky. Of course, it helps that Xena's story sprung out of multiple seasons build up of angst instead of shoehorning the motivation for the "lesson" in at the end of the last episode with no deep understanding about what the songs need to bring out. Also, Kevin Smith's voice was yummy. So sad again about his death.

Chase is a bastard son, right? It likely has something to do with his pathology, as classic narratives like to paint illegitimate children as morally corrupt or at least "less than." Adrian/Simon probably had to work harder to win Daddy's love, only to have such work unravel when the Arrow killed his father.

So, I had a thought. What if Tina is Talia's daughter? She was a kid when Sara met her in the 50's right? Kept pretty by the pit, we assume. But she must have done something to upset her father so that she hasn't been involved with any of the LoA plot lines until now. It could give Tina more cred for her fighting skills/comicbook relevance. Also, assuming Tina was abandoned or other wise doesn't know what her mother is up to in present day, it could be a reason for her to join the group in Russia if they go looking for Talia if Talia trained Prometheus.

Yeah, at this point, if Olicity is dead, I could get behind an actually love interest for Felicity, but even in that I doubt these writers. From interviews they really seemed to think that Ray Palmer and Billy Malone were the stuff of Valentines, and neither did anything for me. I agree that part of Billy's problem was his impermanent status that meant very little screentime to sell the character. However, EBR sold me Felicity in only two scenes, so I do blame casting for some of the flop of the two men. An Ed Raymond guy who is a business man without a comic destiny could be interesting. He could help support Felicity's stated desire to help the world with tech not vigilante warfare. He'd eventually have to learn about Felicity's night job... And I think he'd actually have a problem with it, because it is DANGEROUS. But it would be nice to have another non-mask.

So many new initials! KP is a pap... Who are the actors?

This is part of what worries me about Olicity. Until season 5, things seemed pretty end game for Oliver and Felicity, but 5A has been confusing as hell with that reading, especially in 5x08 and 5x09. Certainly degrades my trust in the writers.

I will laugh my ass off if they are thinking of launching a spinoff with Wild Dog.

I bet they thought that they could have John Jr. be the Conor Hawke from LoT, but after the seasons aired someone pointed out the reasons why it doesn't work: 1) he'd be too old, 2) it means that Flashpoint happened before Flashpoint happened, making time travel all stupid, so now Marc is walking that side of things back. Honestly, I think they simply didn't think about what it meant to rewrite a girl into a boy. They saw it as a small detail that could change to show the ripples of Flashpoint without giving the Arrow canon too many narrative problems.