Carrie Ann

He should have used a better word and I think maybe he's directing his anger in the wrong direction, because the (stupid, awful, screwed up) MPAA and their puritanical, inane rules are the reason for the lack of swearing in teen movies--it's not like filmmakers have become less "ballsy" or something. They're just not allowed to do things they once were.

Yeah, as an audience member, I'd prefer if ALL Q&As require questions to be screened in advance. Not just because of ugliness, but also weirdness and awkwardness, and because so many questions tend to fall under the category of "[Five minutes of blather so that all may bask in the glory of my brilliant mind.] Do you agree?" And that's not fun.

I want Keiynan to wear those glasses on the show. They are really working for him.

I didn't see every episode of this, and I could be remembering incorrectly, but: my overall impression is that the show was sort of sneaky in that the (gross) hook of it was exactly as Sarah described--look at these ridiculous, crazy women! We need to tame them!--but over time, the actual work of the show was to instill back in them their self-worth. Starting, as Joe said, by using their real names. By the end, you did feel like you got to know them better and much of their rage or acting out was sourced to insecurity or something more serious, so it wasn't just a joke anymore. The challenges and metrics for their growth were still pretty, uh, Anglocentric, let's say, but that was kind of the top level of the show, I guess. I do agree that it's better that this type of thing peaked and (mostly) died off, though it feels like it was replaced by non-comp reality shows like Honey Boo Boo where the goal was just to point and laugh, not to try to change the subjects.

I think maybe it might be best if people just let other people's takes exist without responding to them to patronize or demand they defend their opinions. Some people are feeling negative about every scrap because that's their overall impression of the new season or of the person giving out the info; other people are taking a wait-and-see approach; others are actually optimistic about the season/cast/etc. My understanding is that no one needs to prove that they're right, indeed they shouldn't try. (Mods, I hope this isn't out of line!) Anyway, I didn't vote in SOTY because I never vote in any of these things, but I'm glad SA seemed to have a fun day yesterday and that they acknowledged the award publicly (one half of them even accepted it in person this year!) without prompting. The core cast seem to be in good moods, and I hope that will give us a fun SDCC weekend, even if we don't get any real interesting spoilers out of it.

Yes, this is what I've assumed as well.

Yeah, I totally agree. It's really shady the way both of his employers are trying to kind of put a positive spin on things. I mean, maybe that's what he wants, but it's obvious something is pretty wrong and I don't see how it helps to deny that.

Oh, I thought that when DOB was in the accident, it was going to mega-delay filming for the Mazerunner stuff because filming for Teen Wolf Season 6 would take precedence (for contract reasons) once he'd recovered. So I just assumed they hadn't filmed anything for S6 prior to the accident, but could definitely be wrong. I have worried about him a lot since the accident. It's really scary and sketchy. ETA: I looked up filming dates, and you're right--TW filmed just prior to his return to Mazerunner filming, so those photos are probably from that time. :(

MTV released photos from the new season of Teen Wolf with DOB in them this week.

I don't like any person involved with this, but Kanye did run lyrics by Taylor, and there would be no reason to do that unless he did want to get her OK in advance. Like she said in the conversation, she would never have expected him to do that. I think he DID feel that "relationships are more important than punchlines," and Taylor seemed very appreciative. She went so far as to say, "If people ask me about it, I think it would be great for me to be like, look, he called me and told me the line before it came out. Joke's on you guys, we're fine.” But instead...she did the opposite. Her response at the time: "Kanye did not call for approval, but to ask Taylor to release his single ‘Famous’ on her Twitter account. She declined and cautioned him about releasing a song with such a strong misogynistic message." That's...not what happened. So if Kanye believed that Taylor approved the lyrics and was going to express that publicly, and then she turned around and acted like she'd been blindsided by the whole thing when the song came out? I think he'd feel like she was the one who sacrificed whatever relationship they had at that point, so all bets are off. (And maybe she felt the same based solely on his use of the word "bitch," but that didn't mean she had to lie about ever having a conversation with him about it.) Based on their conversation, he seems to have run two lyric options by her and she didn't have a problem with either. So maybe he didn't use the word "bitch" in either, and should have run that by her before it was final (it's such a common word in hip-hop, I can imagine he wouldn't even think about it, but he's also shitty sometimes, so it's hard to say), but it's pretty slippery of her to start out acting like the whole thing had a "misogynistic message" that she never approved or even had a conversation about and only adjust her story as additional claims/details emerged, and now she's basically walked it all the way back to the unapproved use of the word "bitch" and is acting like she never said otherwise.

Popular use can be traced back to a Vine.

Regardless of Stephen's intentions, which I guess we might never know, I don't see how this girl was unaware of how her series of tweets and pics ending with "he's going to take us home" would read. Either she just wanted to hint at that, to make it seem like more than it was (presumably just to her own friends/followers, if she didn't intend for this to spread like it did), or because that's exactly what it felt like, or...honestly, I don't know what other option there is. She's incredibly naive for someone over the age of 18, I guess is the kindest reading?

I've liked him better in everything he's been in outside of HP than in HP itself, though he, like all the young cast did improve very much from the first to last films. I think he's pretty solid these days, and this sounds like great casting. I'm hoping he's not so much sneering Draco as he is suspicious and slightly antagonistic toward Barry. Frankly, I could use more people on that show who don't like Barry, haha.

Carly Pope and SA are the same age, which means...yep, she's probably too old for The CW to consider her as a love interest. My ideal scenario--if we have to even hint at other LIs, which again is not my preference--would be something like @dtissagirl's suggestion, where Felicity sees Oliver and someone else together (maybe the woman is flirting) or misconstrues information, and there never is an actual date, but it's enough to kickstart things, on both sides. But yes, what you said about Oliver's hero journey vis a vis the love of a woman is right on. There is a story they've been telling for four seasons, and if they were to actually abandon it or go back on it, basically denying its importance, then there's nothing left of value in the show for me. Not just because Olicity is a huge factor in why I'm still watching at all, but because character development is really the only thing I watch TV for.

You are obviously allowed to quit liking any aspect of the show for any reason. Sorry if it came across like I was challenging that. I have seen a lot of this LI angst directed at Oliver and his feelings, and not as much directed at Felicity and hers (which I think is mostly just because people seem more inclined to believe that if one of them does have an LI this season, it would be him), and I was just curious if you would feel the same and why. I think we're on different pages re: Felicity v. Oliver trying to move on, but on the same page re: dates v. relationships.

"In case she isn't available?" To me this is kind of minimizing the way Felicity presented her feelings, and IMO, the way Oliver perceived them. The situation here isn't that she happens to be dating someone else, like when she was with Ray in S3. It's that she told Oliver explicitly that she could never be with him, and she has not indicated otherwise so far. That's not unavailable, that's permanent. And I'm not saying that I'd be convinced by him (or her) being happy in a new relationship. I just think he might try. Because he "honestly believes [he] can't get back together with" Felicity because she "can't get over what he did." The same reasons you laid out for not faulting Felicity trying to move on, I wouldn't fault Oliver either, that was my only point. I too would think less of both of their feelings and their relationship if either of them spent any real amount of time in a different, happy relationship. But just trying? Going on a few dates? I still don't want to see that, but I would understand it and it wouldn't make me jump ship. (I might let it all pile up on the ol' DVR though...)

I basically agree with all of this, but re: the last bit--Felicity would need to say something that indicates she is, in any way, open and interested in getting back together with him, even if she still has some fears or doubts. Then he could start the proving-himself process. But otherwise...I mean, people thought it was manipulative for him to remind Felicity of his feelings in S3. I don't see a difference here. He laid it all out in 416; doing that again, unprompted, would seem disrespectful. That first part might seem like something to viewers (it did to me), but it definitely wasn't meant to be Felicity explicitly opening the door again for Oliver (if it were, there would have been many significant looks and maybe some actual movement, uggghhh this stupid show). To the other part, I wonder if you'd have the same feeling about Felicity trying to move on. Yes, she was the wronged party in the breakup, but she is also the one who does not currently want to get back together, where Oliver would probably do anything to get back together with her, as @apinknightmare said. So if she tried to move on, would that also damage your impression of the depth of her feelings? Because to me, the motivation in both cases would be the same. It would be an attempt to get over their feelings for the other person because of their underlying belief that there is no chance for that relationship, and that attempt would ultimately fail because the feelings would be too strong.

Yes, and it's not good there either, but the Sand Snakes are at least a little more fleshed out and 3-dimensional. I wouldn't have been sad if they'd just cut Dorne altogether once Oberyn was out of the picture. Some of the problems with the show for the last few seasons are actually just a result of how much wheel-spinning and stalling happens in the last two books, so I don't blame all of those things on D&D. But they were already making pretty large changes by last season, so they could have made some choices then that would have made things better, but instead most of their changes just made things worse. I'm at least glad that they seem to have taken some of the criticism seriously and made adjustments.

I was specifically thinking of Sansa's storyline last season, which killed my faith in the show for good. But there was also Dorne, which was just a complete failure, and this season they spent two total scenes there. There was the Shireen thing, There was the endless Meereen story which no one GAF about, Last season, there were two major problems for me. One, there were very few "wins" for the "good guys." The bad guys--Roose and Ramsey, the Faith Militant, Melisandre, the White Walkers, the nobility in Meereen--basically came out on top in almost every major and minor conflict. It's exhausting to watch ten episodes of that. Two, and more importantly for me, there was a lot of abuse--particularly non-book-canon abuse--piled on to women in particular. This season they seemed to spend a lot of time trying to make up for it by giving all the women opportunities to fight back against their abusers (Sansa, Cersei, Dany, Arya) and women just became more powerful and were given more interesting, less passive/victim-y storylines in general (all of the above plus Yara, Brienne, Lyanna Mormont the Queen of My Heart). I mean...I saw through that effort, but I don't care. I would still rather watch a season full of "oops, we fucked up, look at all this girl power!" than another season where everyone is victimized. That also helped to remedy their "good guys never win" problem, but they went further and let things happen that they'd been stalling on-- There were little victories in every episode, in addition to larger ones along the way.

I was a little sad In general, I enjoyed this season about about a hundred times more than last. I will still never trust the EPs of the show again, but at least they made it enjoyable this season and they finally gave some payoff to things they'd screwed up or dragged their feet on for several seasons.

We do know that PT still exists in the future (in the current timeline), and there's no reason to believe that any future Queen Inc (or whatever) would come out of PT. IMO, at this point it would make more sense to start a new company from scratch, and I'd have a lot more interest in watching that than watching these characters continue to build a company with Ray's name on it when he's not on the show.

At this point, we've had at least four people regularly sharing the general "fighting" skills since S2. I think Felicity, as a character, can handle another person sharing the entirety of the STEM fields. I'm not upset about this, firstly because I wanted there to be some differentiation between C & F, but more importantly because over the course of four seasons, I think Felicity has seen the most character development/role expansion of anyone on the show other than Oliver. Dig hasn't had an actual, regular job since S2, and even in those days, the job was notably beneath him. He's too smart and skilled to be someone's bodyguard, and yet...here we are. I guess we'll see how far-reaching his return to the military will prove to be this season. But honestly if he came back to SC and continued to have no job, I would be completely unsurprised. He also hasn't really evolved much, skill-wise, I don't believe. He got a very shitty mask, but otherwise, he pretty much does the same stuff he always did. And that's fine with me. Oliver also pretty much does the same stuff he always did (on the team), but actually less because he's not supposed to be in charge of the team anymore . So Felicity has evolved in her professional life from IT girl to Oliver's EA to VP to CEO; on the team from occasional IT consultant to full-time team member and de facto boss of the lair; and in her personal life (w/r/t Oliver), from associate to friend to partner to love interest to fiance. I'm not worried about her occupying every single inch of her various spheres, so I'm fine with another person in the lair having certain skills that overlap with some of hers, particularly those that are less prominent/important to her character.

I actually am not particularly concerned that there will be any Ray-like love interest for either of them, because I think it's in the show's best interest to take a break from "Olicity drama" for awhile. But I agree they do dumb things all the time. One issue I have with a new love interest for Felicity is that it wouldn't serve a purpose anymore. In S3, Oliver needed to come to the realization that he did want to be in a relationship with her, that it was possible. Ray was there to show him what that looked like. Felicity needed to learn that another guy wasn't going to cut it; Oliver was it for her. Now? Oliver basically knows all he needs to know regarding his feelings and desires, and the onus is not on him to make a romantic overture. Yes, he should hopefully do something that indicates his commitment to positive growth or whatever, but Felicity is the one who needs to indicate that she's open to returning to him before he should make some sort of move. So, yeah, Felicity did nothing wrong and she's not the one who needs to prove she's changed (though I do hope she will do some growing as far as retreating into her pistachio shell). But she is the one who needs to have her mind changed (like Oliver in S3) that she can take the leap to trust him again, so any new love interest would need to be there to serve that purpose, and those dots just don't connect for me. Would it help Felicity to date someone else to realize, again, that she is not over Oliver? I guess? It just sounds repetitive and tiresome to me.

I mean, it's not really the author's fault that "past A/B" shows up in the regular ship tag. It shouldn't. AO3 needs to work on the ship tag systems in general; people have been asking for years.

Yeah, the show is also about a book and a half behind on Jaime's character development, especially w/r/t Cersei, so that's been kind of disappointing too. But I understood some of the changes the showrunners made to his story, plot-wise, which necessarily delayed some of the other development, so I'm willing to be patient for awhile longer on the internal stuff. Also I really liked the last episode and have liked the whole season quite a bit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯