statsgirl

A couple of Felicity and Tommy fic for Nanrad.: Smoak and Merlyn by writewithurheat In the universe right next door by redtoes. I don't know if either of these are the one TanyaKay was referring to but I like them because they have a nice friendship between Felicity and Tommy. While looking for their urls, I went to an archive of our own and put in Felicity Smoak and Tommy Merlyn. 18 pages came up! Many of then are group fic, but it appears that quite a few of us with that Tommy and Felicity could have been friends.

Foundry Fridays humor must be getting better with EBR and now CH added. Katrina Law does stand-up, which requires not only a sense of humour but a lot of bravery. I think that came through in the last episodes, not so much in Heir To The Demon because that was about the Lance Family Drama, so I really hope Nyssa comes back, and often.

Watching them do a number of interviews, all on the same set and during the same two days, I really get a sense of how tiring it is to do all that p.r. work. Colton especially puts a lot of effort into it. I like "Felicitoy". Hopefully they get to have some fun as Roy and Felicity too. "If you can't see my feet, I'm wearing slippers." Love her.

That's a hard one because I don't know many actresses of that age, Mia Kirschner but she's older now. Tatiana Maslany but she's got a better gig. Elyse Levesque? (currently on Cedar Cove) Holly Deveaux from Hemlock Grove? I guess the casting would make a difference depending on whether you wanted to see her end up with Oliver or not. If not, then just a good actress who can do physical things. Awesome. (as much as I'm conflicted about Adam Baldwin due to the whole birth control thing. I like your scenario too. The problem with this parallels the problem with comparing Laurel's five years to Oliver's and Sara's. Laurel was risking her life not for her actual clients but for the papers in their court cases. Tommy lost his life for a flesh and blood person.

Speaking of being lonely/alone, the other day I was thinking if Tommy had survived the Undertaking and wanted to talk to someone about it, who would he talk to? Even if Oliver had stayed in Starling City (since Tommy didn't die), things would have been uncomfortable between them from that whole 'sleeping with Laurel' thing. Ditto Laurel. Malcolm Merlyn was dead (supposedly) and Moira was in jail for colluding with him. Quentin Lance didn't like him and Roy and Felicity didn't know him. Possibly Thea but she would have been too young to dump all that angst on. The only person I could come up with was Raisa, from when he grew up around the Queen Manor after Malcolm left him. So if anyone knows lonely, I'd say it's Tommy.

After Sara saves the kid from the building, so Laurel knew. . He loved her and she was in danger. "There was no choice." (Okay, there was, but I can't see Tommy not going to save Laurel.)

Definitely Thea should be on that list, for when she lost Robert and Oliver and Moira withdrew, for when she lost Walter, Oliver left and Moira was in jail, and after Moira died and Thea was the one who withdrew from Oliver and Walter. But not more than Felicity imo. It makes a lot of difference to emotional health (the studies tell us) how long you had a stable loving family. Felicity lost her father at a young age (someone said 5) and had a conflicted relationship with her mother afterwards. Thea had a loving, stable family until she was 12. Laurel had hers until she was 22. I'd say Sin and Roy are the worst off there. ETA: and maybe Tommy, who lost his family when he was 8.

Given MG's comments about the deleted scene, that when we see it we'll know why Laurel went to CNRI even though it was dangerous and we'll love her for it, the purpose of that scene was to show us how dedicated and committed she is to the little people. Unfortunately for the producers, what it showed was how incompetent she is. Maybe that's why it ended up on the cutting room floor. That's a good point, that Sara's six years should have been enough redemption for her even if she had been Malcolm Merlyn levels of evil before. Do they want to have us see Laurel as a do-gooder? Or not? Just like sleeping with your sister's boyfriend isn't something you do to siblings. And yet Sara gets all sorts of shade for it while Laurel doesn't. For me, that conversation set up that there was a pretty antagonistic relationship between Laurel and Sara, and that Laurel was no white hat in it. Although in terms of how long Laurel and Oliver knew each other, it makes most sense to me that they met at school, probably in grade nine which is an entry year for prep schools (they add in another class so a bunch of new kids enrol, otherwise you have to wait till someone drops out). That would make Oliver knowing her half his life. So Laurel would have known Oliver for at least two, possibly four years before that party since Sara was two years younger. But if Laurel already knew Oliver that well, why be so worried that Sara had a crush on him? Was it that she wasn't dating him yet and wanted to cut Sara off at the pass? The Laurel Problem is something I haven't seen on a TV show before. Normally if there is a leading character that people are this split about (love/hate, two major fandom upsets in the past week), they either change the character or write him or her out. But because of the comics, there is one group of people who insist that she must be on the show and take her place at Oliver's side, while there is another, those who didn't come from the comics or are tired of Laurel, who would happily let her off the show. I wonder if we are meant to see Laurel as a proto-Moira, staying with a cheating SO for the perks and because he's an alpha male. With Moira at least we got to see that she loved her children. While it makes all the sense in the world for Oliver and Laurel to have a conversation if/when his child appears on the show, it's equally likely that Laurel will just assume that he came from one of the times she and Oliver were on a break. Tommy said that if Laurel knew Oliver was The Hood, she'd be with him. And he felt that even if she didn't know, as soon as she knew that Oliver was available, she'd drop Tommy and be with Oliver. And he was right. That's on both Laurel and Oliver because they knew that Tommy loved Laurel. You don't do that to your best friend, or to the guy you know loves you and is having hard times. Yes, Tommy could have fought for her, but what would have been the point? He knew Laurel would pick Oliver if she could have him. It's possible, but the problem is that there isn't any evidence of this other than Laurel accusing Sara of stealing her life. If Laurel suffered, they need to show. Or even have Quentin tell us. The only indication is that she didn't date anyone other than Tommy. Other than that, her life went on. We also know she didn't help her mother, she completely rejected her, and while she helped her father, it was reluctantly and with bitterness. If Laurel ever owned up to not being perfect and having the moral high ground, that would do a lot for her character. In my experience, true do-gooders don't see themselves as saints. I think having Laurel compare herself to what Oliver and Sara went through is making the Laurel arguments more bitter. Some people agree, she did go through her own crucibles while others just as see it as being comparable. Another thing that would help is if she didn't see herself as 'more sinned against than sinning'. And as Orion pointed out, some emotional maturity and self-control would help too.

I agree, loneliness can happen even when we are not alone. In fact, it's a major cause of depression among otherwise well functioning adults. Just because Laurel was in a relationship with Oliver and had two parents who loved her and a sister, and friends and a purpose in life doesn't mean that she wasn't lonely. But the problem is that the show has never hinted that Laurel is lonely. Family-wise no other character is as well-off as she is, and she's got friends who didn't die in the Glades (unlike Roy). Sara was probably very lonely while she was gone (and possibly while still at home too since Laurel appeared to be the favoured daughter, Tommy's mother died and his father abandoned him, Thea has lost three parents, Sin lost both parents and ended up living on the street, Roy's mother died and addict, Diggle lost his brother and it's been stated on the show that Felicity has a fear of abandonment and feels like Team Arrow is her new-found home. By the time the Lances' marriage ended, Laurel had already moved out of the family home. Without any indication or canon reason for Laurel to be lonely, it just ends up looking like something made up to justify when Laurel is being a bitch.

If so many of us watched New Amsterdam, why was it cancelled? That cancellation is the main reason I never give my heart to a TV show any more. Um, back to Forever... it does feel like the bastard child of NA (but without the smarts or the explanation) and Elementary but I like the Hirsh and Gruffudd, and the guy who used to be one of the squints on Bones. And if the detective is going to be his love interest, I like her a lot more than the one on NA who I kept wishing would turn out to be evil so we could get rid of her. So did I. It was pretty good in some respects. And then IG's character turned into Wilson on House M.D. (same producers)

From the spoiler thread I think they knew that Laurel was disliked in s1 but s2 when Sara came on and Laurel had the (non-)addiction arc it got worse, and I don't think AK and MG either anticipated it or know why even now. They may have thought that with a year of Sara, Laurel will be ready to assume the BC mantel in s3, or at least prepare for it. I wish I knew what they were thinking. Was the addiction arc their idea of preparing Laurel to be the BC, or just giving her something to do since she was out of the A plot so often?

No, you're remembering right, Oliver really was that much of a dick. Even more, because Felicity had just said that she didn't want to share a cab with Isabel but Oliver made her do it anyway. I'd really like to see Felicity call Oliver out on these on-going doucheries. She does on the really big ones but a lot of times he treats her like his employee and not a partner. It's also why it's hard to get upset over how he awful he was to Laurel by taking Sara on the boat when he still does these things to Felicity who has never been anything but supportive of him.

I thought Sin came with Thea and Roy, and Thea was there because she knew Sara from before as Laurel's sister and because it was at her house. Thanks for the reality check on the episodes. I hadn't notice but now that you mention it, yeah, that's just all kinds of wrong. Why take Diggle and Carly out for dinner but not Felicity? They've taken her to Big Belly Burger so she knows Carly. And asking Felicity to make the reservations when she's told him how much she hates to be his EA .... wow, Oliver could be a jerk.

Maybe they would be willing to give Laurel a different name, in the 'some characters are moving closer to their comic book counterparts and some farther away' theme. If they find a strong actress to take the Oracle role, I could see CL, JdG and someone else in a BoP spin-off. I guess a lot depends on how The Flash does, and if there is interest in a Suicide Squad spin-off. I don't think they saw it coming, either the dislike of Laurel or how much people loved CL as Sara.

I wonder what positioin Geoff Johns is taking on Sara vs Laurel. He is their DC Comics connection as well as a writer for the show and I've heard that he likes Sara.

It's season 3 and I think they do need to branch out for everything being about Oliver because it's going to get boring otherwise. So Thea gets an arc with Malcolm, Diggle gets the Suicide Squad and we get backstory (finally) on Felicity. But giving us more background on Sara and making her a more sympathetic character just doesn't make sense unless they're going to keep her around and in the Black Canary role. The backlash if they have Laurel take on the jacket is going to be even worse.

Thanks for the report, HighHopes. They both sound like nice guys.

SA said that Oliver was sleeping at the foundry when the season opens.

I think part of the problem with Laurel is that she rarely admits to her own role in what goes wrong and instead blames it on other people (Oliver, her father, Sara, etc.), unlike Moira who took responsibility for Robert's death even though all she did was encourage him to stop Malcolm Merlyn. She blamed her father for Sara's death and both her parents for abandoning her by their divorce and she was often mean to them to take revenge, as if she was the only one who suffered. Laurel did eventually acknowledge that she had a role in Tommy's death after blaming the Hood for months for not saving him. Oliver has apologized so many times for taking Sara on the boat, and in The Undertaking, he told Laurel that they should have talked to each other five years earlier. I'd really like to see a scene between Oliver and Laurel where they both admit to mistakes, where Laurel acknowledges that she and Oliver never really knew each other in the past, that they were in love with fantasy images of each other, and that she pushed Oliver too hard and ignored all the signs that he was cheating on her, including Sara's outright statement. (Laurel responded "Why can't you be happy for me?". No wonder it pushed Sara onto the boat with Oliver.) That would go a ways to redeeming Laurel for me. I only know of a few people in real life, a lucky few, who haven't been cheated on at one time or another. You suck it up, decide to learn from it, and go on. On the show, Moira got cheated on regularly. Thea thinks Roy cheated on her too. Oliver apologized to Laurel, a number of times. Many of us don't get even that. So while I acknowledge that to have your boyfriend cheat on you with your sister is an awful thing to have happen to you at the time, I can't with Laurel still being so angry about it especially given that she got on with her own life just fine. What it does is contribute to the general impression of immaturity I have about Laurel.

According to James Fallon, it is something you are born with, but raised in the right circumstances, it doesn't express itself. I like Sherlock, in the BBC series, describing himself as "a high functioning sociopath". Nothing at all like Oliver Queen.

I really get the feeling that they are going to ignore the anti-Laurel feeling and write her as becoming the Black Canary. Just because they want to and they can. The Queen mansion was sold (I'd expect it to get $4 - 10 million depending on whether land prices in Starling City are like those in Vancouver) presumably because it was part of underpinning the stock they had to acquire to keep QC, along with any other land, major jewelry and the paintings, and Oliver is living in the foundry. But if you're right and he still has money from all that, even more reason to help Felicity out. Starting a consulting company doesn't take much money (I had a joint one for years). Basically it means giving her enough money to live on until she can get some contracts as she works out of her home, and once clients start coming in because she is good, she can roll along, hiring people to work under her and moving into office space as her company grows. Because really, the only reason she's no longer working in the IT department at QC at her old salary is Oliver. They better play the part-time job for laughs because otherwise Oliver is going to look like a major douche again.

From the clip.... I think it's really sweet that Colin Donnell was like their big brother on set and is still texting them. That explains the photo of them with Colin when he shot his scene this season. Poor Colton, getting poked while he's supposed to be unconscious so he'd break the scene. Earlier the question came up of whether SA was getting a swelled head; they say no. The background picture just reminds me of how much I liked the s2 poster more than the new one.

Interestingly, it was also Sara's first instinct, for example when Roy was mirakuru-raging. Doesn't Oliver even say that he used to be like Sara when he first got back from the island? So no, there was nothing suggesting an addiction to killing. (Now Slade, on the other hand... ). More like both Oliver and Sara were desensitized to killing as an efficient way to solve a problem. (Although with Sara there was that whole 'I don't want to kill any more' in 2a but maybe that only applied to people she was hired to kill.)

It's possible that they used the Queen assets to prop up their QC shares in s2. That's why the lawyer wanted Thea to sign over the trust to another trust, to keep the Queen assets secure, and Thea didn't. Given Oliver's personal fortune, I would hope he would have been paying Felicity a lot more than $40,000, especially given the hours she puts into her night job. But if Oliver is not suffering money problems, why doesn't he help Felicity out so she can start up her own IT consulting firm? (I know, plot contrivance) I think that interview was done during SDCC because I've heard before. I don't see how I'm going to be happy with Laurel's trajectory unless they send her to Nanda Parbat for the season.

I hated how she treated her mother at the end of Salvation, having the woman in the photo show up just like that instead of telling Dinah that she was wrong about Sara being in the photo. Huge levels of cruelty and wanting to stick it to her mother. There was a link earlier to the difference between personality and character. I didn't get it though. I think state/trait is a better differentiator. A trait is what is a part of you (like Felicity's fear of heights), a state is how you are now (jumping out of the plane to bring Oliver back). For Laurel, I think expecting everyone to agree with her and getting angry at them (and vengeful) is a trait. She wanted Tommy to reject Oliver too, she wanted to punish her mother and father for hoping Sara is alive, One minute she's saying she wants to fight for her relationship with Tommy, the next she's climbing Oliver like a tree. Was she lying to herself when she said that she wanted Tommy? In the season premier she told Oliver Tommy was the one she loved, and a few episodes later she's expecting Oliver to sleep with her. Exactly. I think making all of her first meets about her is also a trait. She makes everything all about her, including giving Sara advice on how to be in a relationship with Oliver.