Carrie Ann

For the record: MG also said Olicity people would be mad at him for quite awhile, and I don't think even he is dumb enough to think our overwhelming reaction wouldn't be elation if they finally did it, no matter what happened next. So, I'm in the "no sexytimes" camp, but it would be sweet. No, I heard that modulator too, but the tone of his post is clearly a tease. Her modulator was pretty standard (actually a little lower than Sara's IIRC and sounded a little ridiculous), not much to love about it. In the post, I'm pretty confident he was talking about the Sara voice. I swear someone here called it as soon as this post came up.

I think I'd feel better about F & D's involvement in the Sara ruse--and hopeful about any future repercussions surrounding it--if I hadn't read MG's comments on Tumblr. Saying "Honestly, I’m a little surprised that people are so incensed about Laurel faking being Canary in front of Lance. Underestimated that reaction for sure" is bad enough, but then remembering his response during the hiatus to the question about Laurel's voice modulator: "Oh, you're going to love it...." just makes it clear that he didn't honestly see anything wrong with it. In the show's eyes, Laurel is the real victim here. And I saw Felicity's emotional response as just that--emotional because she was sad for Quentin. Not because she felt like they'd done something wrong here--because again, the writers don't believe they did anything wrong--but because you know, it will be sad when he learns his daughter is dead.

Oh, I don't think for a minute that MG wants to kill Olicity. I think he's pretty committed to it, no matter what he says on social media. But I also think his instincts are just completely off for these characters and maybe just human beings in general. They write to plot and miff these huge character beats. They miss the emotions altogether sometimes, because they don't give any time for moments to land or breathe. So Oliver's death, emotionally, has been a huge miss for me. None of the characters has mourned to the level I would have expected, and what that does is weaken viewers' perception of the depths of their relationships. I thought they were all more important to each other than a few days of stiff upper lips and a tear or two. And yes, I can fill in the blanks and imagine them crying at home. But all I've been doing this season is filling in blanks and fanwanking reasons for choices that don't jibe for me, and you can only do so much of that before the ratio of what is actually happening on the show vs. what you're mentally fixing or filling in for them hits the tipping point.

I don't like Felicity less for anything that's happening involving Oliver, but I do like Olicity less right now. Aside from the crossovers, I haven't liked anything about Olicity this season since the date blew up. I found that little bomb to be an unconvincing reason for Oliver to completely reverse himself, and ever since, it's just been a tough slog for me. I'm disappointed in the writing (or the lack of writing) for Felicity's side of the non-relationship, and I'm disappointed in the handling of Raylicity. In many ways, 312 is starting to sound like a make-or-break for me in terms of the rest of the season for Olicity. If the emotions and reasons for the Angry Scene of Anger feel real and right to me, then I can handle the crap that comes after. I can handle her getting with Ray, and I can handle another half a season of Oliver and Felicity being at odds. I'm not going to enjoy it, but good angst is its own kind of joy. But if the emotions in the Angry Scene of Anger don't feel right? If they feel off to me in the way so many things have this season? Then that's probably a ship-killer for me, because all the crap that comes after will just feel wrong, and it's so hard to come back from that and recapture all the things that made the ship appealing in the first place.

Just going to throw it out there that I hope Felicity and/or Laurel are not Lyla's bridesmaids, because I hope she has closer friends and family than that. It's cool in fanfic, where we can pretend all sorts of relationship development that we haven't seen, but it would be pretty silly to act like they're her closest friends when they've barely shared screentime.

Berlanti is for sure the best of the trio, but I have to imagine his involvement is very limited with either show at this point, to their detriment.

They did, actually. But I don't think a person would create an entire wardrobe out of cropped tops like Thea has.

Oleson and MG also co-wrote 314 together; you know, the one MG just said was his favorite Season 3 episode, because it's just really special, a love letter to the fans. Like, damn, buddy, it would probably look better to name someone else's episode when asked.

Man, I used to love Dany, but IMO Emilia Clarke has lost whatever subtlety she once had in her performance. It's all imperious looks and solemn words, and it comes across very showy. Eh. I'm over her performance, but still like the character from the books (although she, like pretty much every character, has taken some turns I wish she hadn't in the later books). Sansa and Arya are my true loves, with Jon Snow in third. I'm a Stark girl, I guess.

She does? What is it? Season 4 ended very close to where we left Sansa in the books, and anything much past that is speculation. If the producers ultimately see Lady S as a plot device, why couldn't they just slot Sansa into the position of executing those plot points? I personally doubt it, but as we know that they aren't planning to have Lady S on the show, someone has to fill the role at least as far as Brienne is concerned, I would think.

Oh my God. Perfict purpel? I don't know what that means, but I love Liv.

Yeah, my feelings about this haven't changed, and that's not only because I officially hate Laurel these days. The point is that Oliver is well within his rights to tell his friend who has all of two months of boxing lessons under her belt that he doesn't think she should take to the streets to fight bad guys. She can say, "Well, I'm gonna." And then he can say, "Fine but I won't train you and you can't use my facilities." And then if TA take her side, well. Then I'm still on Oliver's side. And then I don't know what to do about that because the show believes he's in the wrong on this one, and I just disagree. No need to go into the thousand reasons why. But yes, the show has always shown Oliver as being controlling and protective instinctively. They ALSO often show that that's his first instinct, and with time or evidence, he can change his mind. And basically everyone around him does whatever the hell they want to do regardless of his attempts to control. So that aspect of him is more endearing than irritating, to me. It's precious, how he wants to control things because of his trauma, but he never really can.

I definitely don't want her to have knowingly killed Sara, because that's the end of that character for me, if that were true. And that means I lose two female characters in one season, and I'm only left with one. But it would be nice to think that aside from the time she spends under the influence of Magic Drugs, she is playing a long game, and I...wish I believed that. That there was some great plan for Thea that would allow for her to have been playing Malcolm all this time. But I think the writers are way more interested in telling Malcolm's story than Thea's. So, unfortunately, I don't think they give a shit about letting her have agency. If they do, that will happen at the very end, and they'll think that makes up for another season of misusing her.

The dynamic between Roy and Laurel didn't bother me either, for the same reasons you've all laid out here. But it's a good moment to point out once again that this is why it was stupid to do the BC story this way. It puts Oliver (and now others) WAY above and beyond her in skill and experience. No matter what happens to her, I will always see her as 5-7 years behind Oliver and Sara; 10 years behind Diggle; 2 years behind Roy, etc etc etc. It's a terrible way to write a character who is supposed to be a force of nature. That was Sara. That's Nyssa. That's not Laurel and it never will be. Not on this show. Anyway, I took a day to chill about this dumb episode, and I did remember that I liked some things about it. And one of those things was Roy. I thought CH did a great job with this material. He's making Roy this very steady guy, maturing in all the right ways. I really like him these days. The other thing I liked was everything to do with Oliver, Maseo, and Tatsu. I liked both the flashback scenes and the cabin scenes. I find Maseo and Tatsu leagues more interesting than I ever found Slade and Shado (sorry, just not a huge fan).

Just to clarify, MG said that the 312 O/F is his favorite scene, and then yesterday he said this, which is why we're 99.99% sure they're the same scene:

I think your spec and @SleepDeprived's make a lot of sense, but, ugh. If we are seriously spending a third of a season with Oliver away from Team Arrow, that will be a huge bummer. I could totally see it, and I could see why Felicity would get really pissed off if Oliver comes back to life, then tells them that he's going to go back out and do it all over again, only this time, he's going to bring their two biggest nemeses with him. What I can't remember is what kinds of BTS photos we've had of SA/Oliver during those episodes. We know that he hasn't yet shared a scene with KC in her Buckle Canary costume (though...he probably does in 312? so maybe he just meant since then). I can't remember what else we've seen of him with other cast members during filming for 312-316.

I basically hate Thompson, and CMM is a huge part of that, but I do sort of wonder whether maybe he's like...whatever the SSR version of Internal Investigations would be. Or a plant from a super secret SSR division, or another American intelligence agency. And that his job is to root out double agents, but also to recruit the best, strongest people for this other division. Because some of the stuff he's throwing at Sousa and Peggy just seems off, in some way. Like, the way he kept pushing Sousa to get rid of the bum, but then ultimately helped with the interrogation. And like he's constantly pushing Peggy, like he's trying to see if she'll break. And honestly, my biggest piece of "evidence" is that there is any hint in the press for the show that Peggy could end up with this dude. Because he is atrocious with her, and I don't need to see him redeemed of that, unless the whole thing is an act.

I think it's just tough because it feels as though there is an unequal love between Oliver and Felicity right now, and that's not my favorite dynamic to see in my ships. But I don't think that's at all what the writers intend. I think they are doing with Felicity in this area what they are doing in every other area: assuming she's a solid enough character that they can neglect her and make her ride shotgun on other characters' journeys. They talk a big game about her claiming this life outside the Foundry, and what that has amounted to is becoming the right-hand girl and love interest for another CEO/Vigilante Hero. Yeah, she got her VP title, but we don't see her working on her own projects--we only see her working on Ray's ATOM suit projects, accompanying him to meetings, beaming up at him in press conferences. So anyway, the writers are just trusting that we will assume she loves Oliver the same way he loves her, and that we like Felicity enough that we'll always be on her side, so they don't need to even bother articulating it. Yes, that train scene on the wrong show was the most we've ever gotten out of her explicitly regarding her feelings. I fully expect her to say a bunch of things in 312 that will almost seem out of nowhere to me, but I will appreciate them anyway, because I just want to hear from her. And the only reason we haven't is that the writers are not as invested in telling her story as they are Oliver's and Ray's. I'm not surprised about the Oliver piece, but I resent like hell that Felicity's story has been given short-shrift just so she can support Ray.

The red drug is very addictive--immediately addictive, and yes, MW uses it to create and control the Reapers. The red drug is what makes them Reapers. There was an episode where Clarke saved him by putting him through a detox which is apparently usually fatal, and then she shocked him back to life, which is why the Grounders and the Ark people came to a detente in the first place. She proved that she could help their people. But I guess I didn't read that end scene as Lincoln betraying Bellamy--maybe I misread it or misheard their plan. I thought that Bellamy was trying to get inside, so he was going to go along with things to get in, but Lincoln was going to fight his way out and escape. Instead, he let them dose him again and now he's a Reaper again.

Noooooo, the suspenders. If we can't have a dance, can we just...have a moment where maybe Felicity sort of falls into him and grabs onto the suspenders to get her balance?

It has only been a week, I think. And they said about another week in between 311 and 312, I think? So at max, maybe two weeks since Oliver's been gone. But EVERYTHING. HAS. CHANGED!

The "lunge" is what people call the Oliver/Sara kiss at the end of 213. (I never really knew it was called that either, and am one of the people who didn't actually hate it.)

Except that we have that "oops" thing from Oliver, so he's clearly going to make some sort of misstep or bad move with Felicity after their reunion. It doesn't seem like he's going that Full Arrow route, so if I had to guess, I'd say that he's just going to come back and nothing will really have changed. Like, I think Felicity may kind of press him on being together because she's so relieved he's alive and she may assume that he will have seen the light on that, and then he just kinda puts her off again. And then she loses it. (And cue flounce and lunge.)

I actually don't have a big problem with Ray, himself, right now. Or, OK, let's amend that to say I haven't had a big problem with him for 310 & 311. It's what Ray is doing to the rest of the show that is bothering me. And I do feel like BR has toned down the crazy eyes, so maybe he saw a little of that feedback. He seems like a really nice dude, and I think he's settling into the Ray role pretty well. That said, I want him the hell off of Arrow, pronto. I don't think they're ready to launch another spinoff right now, so that's fine. Send him to The Flash next season, or have him recur on both shows. I don't care. All I know is that Arrow doesn't have time or space to develop every superhero in the DCU, and I'm sick of Felicity being siloed in Rayland and I fear it's only going to get worse for the rest of the season.

I actually considered the Vertigo idea at one point but The Flash crossovers would seem to rule that out.