Carrie Ann

Oh I forgot about that feature! But some writers I like are writing drabbles on the MTV post, so I like the option of being able to selectively expand it.

Ugh, Guilty. That episode is truly worthless, and showcases maybe the most egregious OOC moments in a season full of them. It's not as offensively bad as Canaries, it just feels like a spec script, written by someone who was only given the broadest of summaries of each character. I don't know why, because both writers have several Arrow credits as producers/writers.

I use XKit and tried blacklisting "mtv" and "source: mtv" and neither worked, so I used "steamy prize" which is in the post itself (which, c'mon MTV social person, the prize itself is probably not steamy), and that worked. Because, yeah, it is kind of OTT at this point. Have we confirmed that it's over on the 8th? Or is it dragging out until the 12th?

His wife (Tara Butters) and her Agent Carter co-showrunner Michele Fazekas are taking over Captain Marvel.

It's sometimes futile or silly to apply real-life emotional responses to TV (you know, like, 'I would never date a vampire!'). But in this case, the show was asking and expecting us to do just that. It was expecting viewers to say, "Damn right Laurel hates Oliver and wishes he'd stayed dead! Of course she's not happy her sister's alive--who would be???" When, actually, I think most people wouldn't feel that way. Speaking from experience, I don't think it's normal to still be full of rage at being cheated on, five years later. Adults are capable of growing up, moving on, having perspective--especially if the people involved have died! I've gone into that on this topic before--the writers just really don't understand or care about how human beings actually behave. That becomes frustrating when they're relying on that very factor to sell you on a character/arc. What sucks is that the show could have, and should have, played with the complicated emotions Laurel had to suffer through--of course she would have been grieving, but then she's also stuck with this inconvenient rage and humiliation and disappointment and heartbreak. But they should have shown that she had moved on from that, and then Oliver's return dredges some of it up again. So, we should have seen her try to just be happy and warm and welcoming when he got back, but then start to see the tension around the edges. Instead, they did the opposite. The show basically only addressed her anger, which didn't ring true for normal human responses, and that one note got really, really old. I lost sympathy for her almost immediately, when it became obvious that she had enough self-pity already, she didn't need any of mine. Clearly she'd done nothing in five years to help herself, but just wallowed in her rage, let all that negativity fester, really sold herself on this tale in which she was the real victim, not the two people who died. The fact that, on Laurel's scale, Oliver cheating on her is more important than him actually dying? I mean, that says it all. Why would I sympathize with someone like that? And you could suggest that it's misplaced anger over Sara's death, except Laurel proves that's not the case when Sara returns in Season 2. She continues to believe that being cheated on was worse than Sara and Oliver "dying," being tortured, and having five years of their lives taken from them. She continues to blame them for her problems, and to resent them for cheating on her, then for dying, then for being alive. Whatever it takes to keep herself in the position of victim. It's just...yeah, once again, I know the writers didn't intend this in S1, and then they kinda tried to steer into their mistake by making Laurel go off the rails in S2, but all that happened is that we got two seasons of a character who was shown to be almost incapable of empathy/sympathy, so the audience in turn found it difficult feel any for her. That might be okay for your basic antihero, or lovable villain, or even a side character, but your leading lady? Who's supposed to turn into a great heroine? And is being described as selfless and compassionate? Nope.

They promised no sleeveless costume, right? I swear I remember someone saying that. They could do the peaked hood thing, I guess? It kinda bums me out that Oliver won't be wearing Yao Fei/Shado's hood anymore, but I guess it's good that he's moving on psychologically from the island.

Yep, I'm sure that comment is about Laurel too. But I also think/hope that it might be referring to Diggle/Thea, because they laid the groundwork for that with the finale. Plus, it would be pretty cute if Dig was taking on a big (well, an even bigger) brother role with her.

There are two of us! Three if you count Joe Reid who did the Marathon Diary and writes the recaps for the site. But I'm not actually watching this season because I don't get MTV anymore and I don't care enough about Teen Wolf to pay for it separately or even to acquire it via, ahem, alternate methods. I've never seen Shelley Hennig in anything else, but after last season, she became my favorite actor/character on TW, with DO'B/Stiles in second. So the two of them together is all I could want from the show, and I'm kind of pre-sad because I know Stalia won't last. I used to like Stydia too, but never enough to really consider it shipping.

Melissa George is mine too, and I would feel a little guilty about it because she really does end up in some thankless roles--I'm sure I hated "Lauren" more than MG herself--but to be honest, she's never impressed me in anything, and she seriously cannot do an accent to save her life. Not sure what her native accent is, but she probably doesn't even sound natural doing that one anymore. ETA: Ha, just listened to this week's Main podcast, where Tara talks about how MG used to be her dealbreaker too, for the same reasons until she appeared on TGW. I don't watch that, but may have to check it out sometime...

Angie is about the only person from the S1 cast who doesn't make a lot of sense to tag along to LA, because the rest of the team could be there on assignment. But I suppose if I can handwave whatever reason they provide for Jarvis to come along, then I can do the same for Angie. Because I really liked her, and I think the show needs women. Plus, the episode I liked Angie best was when she was covering for Peggy with Thompson, so maybe they can recruit her to be undercover for this job. And she can flirt more with Thompson, because that scene was also the most I ever liked him.

Maybe the time Felicity told Oliver she wished he'd really died when the boat went down? Oh, wait.

I don't think this is a problem for me either, but I do think it can happen sometimes, especially with problematic characters. I sometimes see these defenses of characters that don't cite anything I've ever seen onscreen, and I think a lot of it comes from "corrective" fic, where people speed along the growth process, or provide a backstory that washes away some of the badness, etc. With Arrow, I haven't personally seen as much of the "fanon" phenomenon when it comes to the characters. I don't think there are many widely-held fanon truths that fill in blanks or solve problems or whatever, so I don't think it bleeds into canon as much. Anyone else have examples of this? With Laurel, since you offered her as an example: to be honest, at least with Olicity fic writers, if they don't leave her out altogether (hi, this is me), my experience has been that they often try to "fix" any issues they might have with her on-screen by making her more likable or fit in better with the rest of the Arrow-verse. I have almost never come across stories in which she's a "villain" or even a negative force. I'm sure they exist, but it's not a common theme amongst the best-received works, I don't think. So, again, at least as far as I can tell, if anything, FF would more likely make you more sympathetic toward Laurel than less, but most likely, it doesn't really affect your feelings about her. It really has no bearing on mine, anyway.

I missed this post, but I'm glad you like that recipe too! I now make a few tweaks to that method; I'll share them just in case others try the original recipe and have similar results. --I use half the amount of sauce called for in the recipe, so only 1/4 cup. I'm guessing Kenji uses a chunkier sauce, but if you're using a smoother tomato or pesto sauce, I found that 1/2 cup is just too much. It leaks out, even getting under the crust, which can prevent it from getting crispy enough. And I prefer the balance of flavors when I only use about 1/4 cup. --I also use less cheese than the recipe calls for, and as a cheese junkie, I never would have thought I'd say that about any recipe. But it's just a little too much for me, and can weigh the pizza down. I'm not exacting in those measurements, but I'd guess I cut out an ounce of both types of cheese. --Also, the recipe calls for dropping the heat to low as soon as you place the tortilla in the pan, while you're saucing and adding the toppings, but I've found that if I turn it to more like medium/medium-low, I never have to put it back on the burner after the broiler step because it's already crisp enough. If I do turn it to low, I always have to cook it on the burner an additional three minutes or so. So yeah, I've done extensive, uh, "testing" on this recipe. Might need to test it again at lunchtime, just to see if I've really perfected it. :)

I don't believe it is--I meant to say something about that too. My personal impression is that Westallen is more popular among Olicity shippers (and fandom at large) than Snowbarry at present. I mean, I'm sure many Olicity shippers don't really ship either, and ditto, many Westallen people probably don't give a shit about Olicity. But that's different than actively hating, and that's why I find it hard to believe that the Westallen people "voting" against Olicity would constitute a significant enough number to make a real difference in this thing.

I find it funny that every time one of these poll things happens, the other team gets the villain treatment, when really, everyone is subject to the same rules and ultimately uses the same tactics (aside from actual cheating, which, if it's happening, it's on the people organizing the contest to safeguard against that). I've seen Olicity fans talking about recruiting other fandoms in the past, auto-reblogging to side Tumblrs, tutorials on quick-vote techniques, whatever it takes to drive numbers up. I don't see anything wrong with any of that, no matter who's doing it. Also, it's often my other ships (Steroline, Jamie/Claire, now Bamon) that are up against Olicity in these things, so I'm probably a little more familiar with those fandoms and feel comfortable saying that they reflect the same broad spectrum as the Olicity fandom. No one has the moral highground when it comes to online popularity contests! :) Bamon may not be as big as Olicity on Tumblr, but their fanbase is devoted and enthusiastic (clearly). They have waited six years for even a whiff of hope for their ship, and they finally got it this season--even moreso after Nina Dobrev's departure was announced--so they picked up a ton of new fans (including me, though I'm pretty ambivalent about TVD in general these days). They're certainly one of the strongest ship fandoms on TVD/TO now (arguably vs the Steroline people, but there's a lot of overlap in those two fandoms) (and if you don't count the doomed ships of Stelena/Delena/Klaroline). But their strong showing is probably a result of organized effort, yeah. I would be surprised if the number of Westallen fans who truly hate Olicity/Felicity enough to robo-vote against them was significant enough to really do any damage to the differential there--same as I feel about Lauriver fans because (seriously no offense intended) there just...aren't enough of them to make the difference in the end.

David Anders already appeared on Arrow as a one-off villain in S1 (not that it matters, he's a regular on iZombie and won't be appearing on another CW show until/unless that ends).

I had no problem empathizing with Oliver in S1--I had a much harder time empathizing with all the people from his old life, who, for a time, were either unhappy with him or trying to slot him back into his old life/old self. I'm not saying they didn't have reason, but given that we as viewers were privy to the new/real Oliver, and what he'd been through, it put my hackles up anytime someone went in on him for "Ollie's" actions, or for not being what they needed him to be. Just an instinctive reaction that actually made me more sympathetic to Oliver. So I didn't connect with any of his pre-island relationships until later in the season (Moira and Thea especially), where I felt the click between Oliver and Dig immediately. That got me through S1, and OTA really sucked me in in S2.

Since that episode aired, people have asked MG and SA questions about the love child by calling "him" Connor and MG/SA have responded without even noting that that might not be "his" name, so I do think it was at least an option that the kid was going to be Connor, at some point. But I don't think that negates @apinknightmare's point that they were keeping their options open by not naming the mother/the kid on the show. They might not have known for sure that they'd be able to use Connor Hawke on Arrow, or whether they definitely wanted to go that route, so why not leave it open until such time as you have to make it official? Personally, my best case scenario is that they never, ever address the love child. That's not going to happen, so my second-best case is that the kid isn't Connor--I'm thrilled that he/she is not, to be honest, because I've had enough of "canon" dictating the story on this show, and I'm thrilled not to have to swallow another instance of the show screwing up when it comes to POC/women/LGBT people, etc. I hope the kid is a girl. I hope she's cute and funny and normal and that we almost never see her on the show. :)

I like the writers you listed too, EmeraldArcher, and I'd second theshipsfirstmate and add wagamiller and ash818 as some of my other favorites who seem to fit the profile of what you like. (Although Ash is mainly writing future fic about Oliver/Felicity and their kids these days, which may not be up your alley.) But my very fave is our pal apinknightmare up there. And personally, I stick to AO3 for both reading and publishing, because I've never come across anything great that was only on FF or Tumblr, and I prefer the interface. One way that I find good works/writers in a new fandom is by checking the bookmarks on the profile of an author I really like. You can also sort by kudos, and that certainly cuts down on some of the chaff, but at the same time, there's a lot of stuff that picks up kudos due to length/number of chapters/amount of smut within, and it's not always reflective of quality, IMO. So I found myself kind of disappointed when I was first looking for stuff to read last summer until I started to do the bookmark surfing.

Thanks for checking, guys! I think I was overestimating the age difference because the character was originally envisioned to be more like 10/11, but then they decided to cast MT and aged Dawn up (though not entirely successfully, IMO). At any rate, I still think that was the vibe they were going for with B/D, and with O/T--siblings that are closer in age tend to feel a little more competitive with each other, I think (Sara/Laurel, for example), while those with a greater age difference can end up with that protective/rebellious dynamic.

Yeah, Bellamy and Octavia are not very far apart in age--a year? maybe up to three? I honestly can't remember--and I do think that plays a part in Oliver's overprotectiveness with Thea. She's his baby sister, so he hasn't yet come to the point where he can see her as an equal. I don't think this is meant to be an ideal dynamic yet, and I suspect they'll work on that this season. I think Dawn/Buffy IS a good comparison, for this reason. Buffy was significantly older than Dawn (7-8 years, I want to say?) and played much the same role in Sunnydale that Oliver plays in Starling, and they both made mistakes in protecting their sisters and made huge sacrifices for them as well. I think the much-younger-sibling is a way for writers to basically give a lead character a kid before they actually give them a kid, in terms of story/character development. And you can get to the critical point faster: where the younger sibling grows up and the older sibling has to learn how to let them be their own person and make their own mistakes. That's the story they've been telling with Oliver and Thea from the beginning, and that's why I think that Oliver will have to let go of Thea a bit more this season. It doesn't mean he'll love her less, but she needs to become more self-determined.

This question is actually really hard for me--and that's a good thing--because I've deeply loved just about all the major characters at one point or other. The only one I really could take or leave is Jeremy, and even he has had great moments over the years. I also was pretty over Tyler for S5 & 6, but that can't take away from how much I loved his S2 storyline. I guess if I absolutely had to pick a top 5 (limiting to major characters), averaging my love-to-hate level over the six seasons, it would probably go: Stefan Bonnie Damon Katherine Caroline Elena (I left The Originals off the list b/c it gets complicated separating their TVD selves from their TO selves, but Elijah would be on my list if I counted them.) Alaric would have made the list, but he was so useless this season, he dropped off. And Elena would NOT have made the list after S5, but I adored her for S1-3, and she made a small comeback this season, so she snuck back on. I love Stefan most of all. I don't know if I can even pinpoint why really, so it's probably down to finding Paul Wesley the most compelling as an actor. I love seeing him play all variations of Stefan and Silas. I will say that S6 was without question the least I have ever liked Stefan, though. I hated his running away, even though I found it believable and in character for him. I hated his eye-roll-y impatience with Caroline's anger with him. I hated seeing him turn Ripper again. I just...didn't like this season for him at all. The only thing I did like was his reunion with Damon, which was probably my favorite scene of the whole season. Maybe of the last few seasons. On the flip side, while I've always been a Bonnie fan, Season 6 was like a whole new level for her. Her dynamic with Damon and their friendship has also gone a long way toward redeeming him in my eyes.

I wasn't thinking very hard about word choice when I posted, and mean is probably better, sure. First, just to be clear, since my post was the one originally quoted: I never took the position that Felicity is a cruel person, or that anything she's done is out of the realm of normal human behavior. I agree that the few instances we saw of Felicity being mean were either knee-jerk reactions to stressful situations or, in the case of her relationship with Donna, shown to be the result of years of a challenging mother-daughter dynamic. And I agree that they make her more human, and a much kinder one than most, at that. I want the show to treat her as human, that was my whole point. I disagree that there was nothing intentionally unkind about her lashing out at Oliver in 302. He'd upset her by demanding her A-game, and she responded in hurt and anger. She said it because she was really struggling with the way he'd shut himself off with her and then further after Sara, yes, and if she weren't emotionally compromised, she probably wouldn't have said it. But there was an unkind thought behind her comment, and it was meant to sting. She regretted it immediately and apologized quickly. Good. But realizing it doesn't negate it. And in 317, there is no call for those comments at all. It's just stress, and she's taking it out on Oliver. I wish she'd apologized to him by the end of the episode--I think I might have really appreciated that whole thing with just that simple change. It would have told me that this was intentional by the writers--that it was meant to show that Felicity's feelings for Oliver were still really screwing with her, and that she was projecting her own feelings about her relationship with Ray onto Oliver. But that's not what they were doing. In the end, the show believes that Oliver was somehow in the wrong, even though Felicity's the one who lied to him (no apology) and then wrongly accused him of unkindness (none there either). In fact, Oliver's the one who somehow has to make...something...up to her by taking the high road with Ray. Truly terrible storytelling and character work there. My point is that anytime Oliver screws up with her (or with anyone, again back to my original point), he ultimately does have to apologize, or else he suffers further via a strain on their relationship until he makes things right. Oliver is the only character whose faults and mistakes are constantly under a microscope on the show, which is why I'm more comfortable with those flaws. I'm not comfortable with the way the show tends to gloss over the flaws of the supporting characters, because it leaves them muddled--is this an intentional character trait or just a fluke that I should ignore?--and it can create an imbalance in relationships. Bottom line: I love Felicity. I just hope the show cares enough about her to explore some of this stuff more.

You're right, and it makes me nuts when people seriously claim otherwise. If there are similarities between the source work and fanfic, it's because of tropes and because a good amount of fic is speculative so FF writers are bound to be accurate sometimes. Plus, what that writer is saying has nothing to do with fanfic. It's about fandom influence in general, and again, I disagree with her logic, but we don't have to rehash that.

I was really only thinking about S3 when I asked about other examples, so I'll deal with those first: you're right that Felicity not telling Ray/Oliver about the other was another mistake that the show presented as one. And she did pay for it for the extent of that episode, where Ray and Oliver were mad at her (Oliver was only allowed a second to be mad though, whereas Ray got to be mad for the whole ep and got an apology!) and at each other. I disagree that the show really took seriously her casually identifying Barry to Ray & Malcolm, because of the way it was used as a joke and there were no consequences. And yep, the virus thing was a mistake but, a) it happened pre-show, and b) she didn't intend for it to be used the way Cooper wanted to use it and in fact tried to prevent that use. So she still had the moral high ground. For the S2 examples: I disagree that the show was judging Felicity as being in the wrong in 209. The show very clearly felt that bringing Barry in to save Oliver's life was the right thing to do--only Oliver felt it was wrong. In fact, he's the one who has to learn a lesson about teamwork and trusting people in that ep. I agree that going out on her own to lure the Count and Tockman were shown to be mistakes, though in the second case, she kinda gets away with it by saving Sara's life and bringing Tockman down. Basically: I don't see another character yelling at or being upset with Felicity = the show is presenting her as being in the wrong, or presenting her mistake as important. On the contrary, in many instances where her "consequence" is Oliver getting mad at her, the show actually believes Oliver is the one in the wrong. And I get it, the show is about him, so his growth takes priority, but this season it started to get old to have Oliver presented as always in the wrong, especially when I disagreed, or at least felt that others were also wrong. I hope I'm making sense here!