Carrie Ann

This was my very first thought. It makes me laugh and laugh to imagine Oliver walking his lonely road, wearing emo eyeliner, singing his sad heart out.

I was editing my post while you were posting, adding that the character may be just deciding to come out now, but yeah, I do think there are a lot of people who don't fully realize or understand their sexuality until later in life, or aren't willing to admit it to themselves or others.

Based on Berlanti's comments--something about not wanting viewers to be ahead of the character's journey--I think maybe the character is just figuring out for themselves that they are gay or at least just now deciding that they want to come out, which makes it logical to me that it would be a plot point and therefore teased. Coming out is something that separates LGBT experience from that of other minorities'/oppressed groups' experience (intersection aside).

Stephen has been against the idea from the very first, so I don't think it was a case of him preemptively rejecting it because he knew TPTB would give that idea to the other shows instead, or something. Based on his comments, I think he agrees with some of us here that it would be a bad fit for Arrow, and however much he may enjoy karaoke, that doesn't mean he thinks Oliver should break into (in all likelihood) some crappy on-the-nose alt-rock covers that would make me cringe my face off. My personal feeling is gratitude that The Flash and Supergirl exist to take this on instead, because they have the right tone to do it in a hopefully less cringe-y way, and the people involved seem enthusiastic about it. ETA: Despite how relieved I am, I know some people have really wanted this for Arrow for a long time--so just wanted to say sorry for those of you who feel disappointed.

I'm hoping that since they have plenty of time to plan, they will just end up down one filler episode, and will scramble to wrap everything up in the last 2-3 episodes as usual. Honestly, I'd be fine with the show going down to 18 episodes, as long as they had enough advance knowledge to plan out their arcs for the season. There are easily 5+ useless episodes every season and I think that causes some annoying back-and-forth character development and plot cul-de-sacs, because they aren't quite ready to get to the fireworks factory, but need something to happen in every episode. (I mean, they could also learn how to spread plot out to more than just three or four episodes, but you know, they probably won't.)

I've never watched SPN, but this Tumblr post about Jared & Jensen's families came across my dash last week and...they are all so cute.

But to follow @wonderwall's analogy--the interviews that came out of SDCC certainly made it seem like a crossover would not have been the Arrow cast/crew's choice for their "party." They would have preferred NOT to have the others participate, however appropriate you may think it is. I think the EPs are spinning it about as well as they can, but it's silly to pretend like situating the crossover on Arrow's 100th Episode is putting a priority on celebrating Arrow. It's not. It's putting the priority on Supergirl first (the one show that shares nothing with Arrow), and the crossover idea in general second, and Arrow's 100th third maybe.

I would super-hate a musical episode of Arrow because I don't think it would fit the tone at all, but I think they could pull it off on The Flash.

Jarrett is a "he," and he was just reporting from the Television Critics' Association panels where the Fox execs/EPs made these comments.

I was going to guess the same. Maybe there's a cool stunt in a scene she's involved in or something. I just kinda doubt that a working actress would be all that excited about any kind of date/flirty scene when she's probably done many of those in her career. (Not that that means that kind of scene won't happen in that ep or another; I just doubt that Carly Pope would care that much.) However, I also don't think 505 is going to be a "good" O/F episode. I feel like if we get any kind of "answer" about them, then maybe it'll be learning something about Felicity's feelings, but something will still prevent them from getting together at that point.

That looks 'shopped. My goodness.

I think there are Spotify playlists based on the music on the show, so you could check those out!

It was one possible future of our (at that point) current timeline, but it wasn't an alternate universe. So I always assumed that Connor Hawke/John Jr. would eventually exist in "our" world. Just assumed he would be Lyla and John's next kid. Now I feel like he's going to be their only kid. :(

Yeah, I've known generally that there were things coming down the line on Poldark that I would hate, so in my mind, it's an eight episode series. I may watch some of the new episodes until one makes me mad and then I'm bailing.

The only way I think Oliver could/should start "fighting" for Felicity again is if she gives him some indication that she wants him to. She shut him down with finality in 416 and didn't reopen that door, and has now apparently started dating someone else. (Whether FP-related or no, I don't think that will be erased by the end of the first ep.) So she would have to 1) break up with this dude, and 2) make Oliver believe, in some way, that she could forgive him and let him back in sometime. (And also, realistically for this show, fighting for her would equal maybe one-two episodes where we see...something similar to 416, I guess? Not sure what anyone else is envisioning for that.) IMO, if one of them had to date someone else first, Felicity is the logical person to do that because of her tendencies to shut things out and try to move on. I don't feel bothered about this on a character level, and I won't if Oliver dates someone several episodes down the line either. We still have yet to hear anything about a love interest for him, but I feel quite confident that should the writers take that route, that move, and Oliver, will receive their fair share of criticism. I don't want to watch it, on either part, but it's not a dealbreaker for me.

I see elements of entitlement on both sides of the issue, and can never really figure out where I come down on it on a larger scale, but this is the one thing I am sure about. There's just no need to call attention to specific instances, IMO, and it's not a good look for anyone. If someone leaves you an abusive comment--like @apinknightmare described above--I could understand having a public reaction about that, though I feel like it would probably be better to just report it to AO3 (as appropriate), delete it, and move on. Speaking of that, I guess my other solid opinion is that I have no problem with authors choosing to moderate or delete comments as they wish. Authors can't stop people from making negative/critical comments (unless they close comments altogether), but I don't think anyone is entitled to have their comments published on an author's work, let alone entitled to a dialogue about them.

I vote no hat-eating for anyone for anything related to Flashpoint because it is all so WTF that I feel like every theory is potentially accurate while also very ridiculous.

One reason I lean toward this boyfriend situation being Flashpoint related--whether he's Barry or someone else--is because of the sort of odd and abrupt way the reconciliation story died off so close to the end of last season. I suspect that when breaking out the season-long story, they were planning to have them reunite, but once the larger EP group decided how far-reaching Flashpoint would be, I wonder whether that's when they decided how they wanted it to affect O/F this season. Had they reconciled, it would have been incredibly frustrating for O/F fans and non-fans alike to pull them apart again because of Flashpoint. But if they did want to return them to the S1/2 dynamic, and to give them more storytelling fuel to drag it out for even longer, then FP would be just the tool to do that. So anyway, yeah, for now I lean pretty strongly toward the idea that in the new timeline, Oliver and Felicity were never together, but both have feelings for each other that have presumably continued to grow/deepen despite whatever other relationship(s) Felicity had/has. And Flashpoint will have erased their history since at least S3, but possibly since Barry visited in S2 (why would he have visited, given the changes to his life? not a clue, but he obviously did). Honestly, that plus the possibility of either fully reverting back to the original timeline or at least recapturing their memories of it, would be my ideal scenario w/r/t the new boyfriend. My worst-case scenario is basically what @apinknightmare suggested--that they're just going to redo S3 stalling/angst/avoidance.

Eureka and Fringe are examples, for me, of how I think this type of story is interesting on a temporary basis but not cool in the long-term. On Fringe, at least there was one other character who remembered both timelines, but that didn't change the fact that several seasons of development had been erased between other characters. (I don't remember the details from Eureka as well, but I know I was disappointed that some things ultimately stayed changed.) But I too don't want to get too worked up in advance. If it amounts to not much changed, then okay, or if it's undone eventually, then okay. But I have concerns.

THREE Notes screen caps, goodness.

This is what I think is going to happen too, but even those ripples...I need those fixed on Arrow, eventually. I don't care what happens on The Flash--ever, really, but particularly w/r/t Flashpoint--but I really don't like it when my shows erase events/development that I spent time watching and caring about. Temporarily, fine, but not permanently. So Barry needs to keep working on fixing those ripples until, say, the crossover.

Oh, I do too. I thought GG's response to the DCCU Flash reveal was really great. It was his response to people this afternoon--who weren't being garbage to him about that, but about him NOT responding to abuse that his costar receives--that I thought was poorly considered. ETA: He's making it worse and needs to log off now.

Haha, earlier today I was talking about how gracious he was about the Justice League Ezra Miller Flash situation, and what a good job he does as a public figure. And...I still think he generally does a good job, but he probably should not have responded like this. I looked at his replies, and it was basically people complaining that he "noticed" the hubbub re: Ezra Miller and spoke about it, but hasn't ever said anything against the racist abuse Candice Patton receives. Which...those things are wildly unrelated and one of them received a lot of media publicity and the other didn't, but whatever, people are going to complain about things like that (or much, much less important things!) no matter what. He should have probably ignored, and really should not have quote-retweeted one such person whose tweet was pretty innocuous by internet standards.

I was a little surprised at the "garbage mayor" revelation, because it was such a Hero Moment when Oliver was sworn in at the end of S4. But now it actually makes more sense to me that he would be struggling, from a narrative standpoint, because: a) they need him to be on an arc in all areas of his life, and S5 is the culmination of his series-long self-actualization arc, so I'm not surprised that he starts out as a not-great mayor so that he can (theoretically? I hope?) become a good mayor by the end of the season (possibly with some major civic achievement situation thrown in alongside whatever city-saving thing he does as GA). And b) they need more impetus for adding the Junior Vigilante Squad, because we know Oliver would be extremely opposed to putting people in harm's way and I'm not sure that just having it be hard on him as GA would be enough for him to give in and accept it. But also, as has been pointed out, this Team Arrow/Work/Life balance thing has always been an issue on this show. Oliver was not an engaged CEO. Dig...hasn't had a real job in years. Felicity has always done the best, but was also fired as CEO when she was absent/distracted too often. (Also because of wanting to make the chip technology affordable, of course.) And now it seems like she's still unemployed? So she has more time to devote to the team, but I agree she shouldn't have to give her time that way. So, yeah, hopefully the point of this (probably brief) period where Oliver is disengaged in his role as Mayor and Felicity is unemployed is that those conditions aren't ideal or sustainable, and they need solutions that will allow them to be more effective in all spheres.

I used the word "ballsy" purposefully to make that exact point. I also didn't ask you or anyone to give him a pass, nor did I give him a pass. I believe I said he should have used a different word?