statsgirl

This scene was after Oliver told her to stay away from the Glades that day, and after Moira had said there was going to be an earthquake. But maybe before Quentin told her to get out of there (which she didn't). As Laurel gave everyone orders to take all the paperwork out, all I could think about were the many, many metal file cabinets in the room. It was an impossible task to get all the paperwork out of there in a hurry because there was so much; why didn't she just get people to put them in the metal cabinets so they would be safe even if the building came down? It was a good scene to cut because it doesn't do Laurel any favours with respect to intelligence or not giving orders to everyone because she knows best.

When was the first time Oliver asked Felicity to do anything illegal? She was slightly uncomfortable when she found out the bullet-holed laptop wasn't his, she was okay with finding where the arrow had come from. When he brought her the USB drive from the "scavenger hunt" and she found out it was security grade she was suspicious but hey, it was his story. He didn't actually ask her to hack into anything illegal until after she had joined the Team. So while she was comfortable with hacking once she had signed on with Oliver and Diggle, that was for Walter and for the mission. She hadn't done anything illegal before that that we know of. On the other hand, she was pretty comfortable with Walter asking her to look into Moira's accounts, no questioning whether she should be doing it or not. So I would expect some hacking in her past but for giggles, not felonies. If coding is your 'thing', the AHDH hyperfocus is going to be a bonus to getting the job done. Also, working alone means that you don't have to decode the social cues that many ADHDers have trouble with, and constantly changing tasks appeals to the need for stimulation. Here are a couple of articles by Russell Barkley (mentions computing specifically) and Edward Hallowell with suggestions. (If you're interested in more, you can PM me because professionally ADHD is one of my areas.)

"Why don't you hire me to be your secretary, Oliver? Of course, then you'd have to fire her." [cold look in Felicity's direction] Someone else would have said "Felicity", acknowledging the person as a person, rather than using a pronoun before a name had been mentioned, but Laurel has never addressed Felicity by name. Yes, she was drunk that time but as they say, in vino veritas.

IMO it's because while Felicity has always been welcoming to anyone who joins the team (e.g. Roy, Sara, Det. Lance), Laurel has been snooty to everyone at one time or another, and to Diggle and Felicity every time she's met them.

From the Felicity thread Aces High by redtoes

Having good computer skills doesn't necessarily translate into having the skills to found a company. IT is a recommended job for both people with ADHD and those with autism spectrum disorders, but ADHDers have trouble with organization and those with autism have difficulty dealing with people, both skills needed for running companies. Replying on why Felicity left town in the Clocktower thread.

Some people just shouldn't be friends other than work friends because their personalities don't mess and that's how I see Laurel and Felicity. Laurel would have to do a 180 to start appreciating someone like Felicity. It sounds like MG knows that Felicity is a whole lot more popular than Laurel. I bet he got lots of tweets when Felicity was side-lined last season. We'll probably see her either getting ready to go, or getting back after she's ended things with Barry and he's moved on to his new triangle. On the whole, I'd rather see the second scene, and how Diggle and maybe Oliver reacts to that. Maybe Flash 1x4 takes place while the Arrow crew are on Corto Maltese. LOL. I think you're right on both fronts, that Felicity is there to help Team Flash deal with what it's like having a superhero, and that Oliver is just that kind of idiot. The cross-overs are eps 8 on both shows so having the Clockmaker appear in Central City in ep 7 makes sense.

Private is alone with no one around who can hear; public is in a restaurant or a park or a tweet on the internet. Because I can understand a couple of languages other than English it feels sort of strange to understand what people who are talking in them are saying but it's a streetcar or a mall so they have to know they can be overheard. Those tweets are utterly hilarious and sadly so true. I want to thank CH for the reality check .... it's not just me, those dates really can be awful.

From the Heartaches thread: One of the great things about Felicity is how complex a character she became so quickly. I don't know if it was the writing, the potential with a clean slate or EBR herself but she quickly got up to Moira-level of complexity. I see Felicity as being someone who knows she's good at what she does. You want hacking, or spying or fixing anything to do with computers, she's the best and she makes sure people around her know it, and that they need to treat her with respect. But emotionally, that's another thing. She doesn't seem to have family except her mother who is.. her mother so it's possible she doesn't think she's lovable, or at least not lovable like the cool girls at school. She was probably way smarter than more kids in her school and stuck out and not in a good way. Her line "At last I get a guy who is interested in me and he ends up in a coma" is not the remark of a woman who knows that there are lots more fish in the sea for her. She babbles and she knows that she babbles, she's made peace with it because it's all she can do, but hasn't accepted it in herself as okay, i.e. not like Scarlett O'Hara who thought that her mannerisms were charming. With Oliver and Diggle and now Sara and Roy, she's finally found a family where she fits in and who value her. The cost to her of losing that (i.e. Moira's threat) was huge, far bigger than the cost of losing her job at QC, but she was willing to risk it to do the right thing. They did a pretty good job in s2 of showing how brave Felicity really is. Yes, she is an underling, to Walter who is her boss and could fire her, and to Oliver who is The Arrow and keeps her around because he wants her around, not becuase there is anything making him keep her. She saw herself as the equivalent of his employee and being told that she's his partner was huge. To a hacker, that's not really breaking the law. Well it is breaking the law but it's not breaking THE LAW.I It's not like pumping arrows into someone, or trying to level the town.

I think that's a really good point -- the show did work better when Laurel wasn't in the episode (e.g. Keep Your Enemies Closer). But they didn't want to lose Laurel as a leading character so they gave her five addiction episodes plus various other (Laurel Lance, Girl Detective) at a time when there was already a ton of stuff to get through in order to get to the finale. It did neither the character nor the show any favours.

It's possible that Laurel hadn't forgiven Oliver and wasn't really interested in being a supportive shoulder for Oliver in the pilot episode, she just graciously did what she thought she should be doing as Queen Laurel. When Oliver rejected her offer, she was angry at the rejection and went with her real feelings of anger and bitterness. If only they had let Laurel have a side of her that's a real bitch, the character would have held together a lot better (hence my bitterness since they're always telling us how wonderful she is).

That's a great tag. I wish Moira were still around so that we could see it. " As you probably already know, the character of Felicity Smoak wasn't part of the plan in the beginning – or even when they first introduced her. "Once we saw those dailies and we saw what Emily [bett Rickards] did to Stephen [Amell], especially early on, it was just this thing that just kept growing and growing and growing," he shared. It's been argued that they teased Oliver and Felicity together because the fans wanted them, the infamous "fan pandering" accusation. This interview shows that it was the EPs and other people on the show who pushed it. The fans agreed 2 months later when the episodes aired.

I think a case can be made for Laurel being jealous of her younger sister. In addition, I think one of the problems with Laurel has always been that Katie Cassidy the person bleeds in to Laurel the character. At the end of s2, we saw that unlike in the pre-island flashbacks, Sara is now focused, driven and self-assured. Maybe Laurel envies her that assurance and wonders if she could have it too

That's pretty good company to be in, but unless your name is Meryl Streep, TV is the place to get a good role for a woman these days (as Glenn Close has said). But I do like the idea of her doing rom coms in her 20s and 30s.

So it is the actor who is the keeper of the character? Paul Blackthorne said at SDCC that Quentin Lance is a blue collar guy and he approached the changes his character goes through next season with that in mind. (I remember an actor from The Lost World saying that in s1 they had a different writer for every episode and it was up to the actors to make sure their characters were consistent) KC seems to have two ideas about Laurel: comics!; and sister!. Beyond that, she plays what's on the page at any given moment. Laurel's back-and-forth is a problem but it could have worked if the core character had remained consistent.and Laurel been played with layers like Oliver or Moira or Diggle or just about every character on the show.

That outfit reminded me of Garcia on Criminal Minds. I like Garcia but she is never, ever going to be anything other than comic relief on that show, and that makes me mad. Yeah, I don't think I even got through watching this episode the first time, much less the second unlike the awesome The Odyssey. Too much Oliver/Sara/Slade, not enough Diggle and way way not enough Felicity. (As for the Please save Oliver".. maybe if they had actually given her something to do in the episode, she wouldn't have had to look like such an idiot.) Or Roy or Thea really. Maybe it was a story that had to be told to set up finale but it wasn't a story I was interested in. It made story-telling sense that Sara was the one to take the lead when they found out that Slade was still around, and she was a big part of the flashbacks but this is where they really lost me on her character because it. was. just. too. much. It wasn't until Streets of Fire that I started to care again. And it's a pity because I'm sure they tried really hard to make it a good show.

I can't get over Oliver's stupidity in burning his bridges with Alexei. Considering how useful he had been in previous episode, that was really really stupid. Are we supposed to take that as a demonstration of Oliver's blinkers now that Slade is around. Stupidity #2 -- Amanda Waller Really, that never grows old. Taking me out of the show moment: How did Slade get all those old films of Shado? And from China too. This was the episode that really sold me on Oliver/Sara as a good longterm relationship. It was as good as Laurel giving relationship advice was bad. Overall, I didn't like it as much as I had the first time. (Maybe because I was on Lance overload back then and anything that wasn't, was good for me.) The best thing about it for me was that we saw play out on screen the story that Diggle had told Felicity back in 1x14 about why he was working with Oliver even though he wasn't in favour of killing. Yay, continuity.

I think the real reason is to appeal to the teen boys (of whatever age). I've always found the ridiculous outfits and impossible proportions of the outfits of many of the comic book women something that really pulls me out of the story. Not to mention, those breasts in the push-up bras would make it really difficult to fight. Ditto the heels. To me, giving Felicity a real love interest so that she actually has a choice shows more respect to the character than MG's comment about wanting to flesh out the female characters. Talk is cheap but if they care enough about her to give her someone good enough to compete with Oliver, that makes me optimistic. That's something they do (relatively) well though, pick out what works and what doesn't and stick with the former. The one exception is Laurel but they're rather blinkered about her. At least Guggenheim admitted they dropped the ball on Roy. Curious wording. That implies that she is the object of Oliver's crush. The fact that they are even thinking of those questions in terms of characters other than Oliver is a good sign. Up to now, it's always been All About Oliver. If they want the show to have legs, they have to extend to focus of interest to other characters. I'm not happy about David Cubitt playing Manhunter, for more than because it means Laurel isn't. . Hopefully his acting has got better.

I love that David Ramsey is reading Men's Fitness. Clearly working to make his character great. The plus is that he included Sara's character there, so they know viewers want to know more about her. The minus -- it still feels like they are going to use Felicity to prop Laurel's character They've spent two seasons fleshing out Laurel. Hopefully they will take her in a different direction now.

i think the show is trying to cut down on shipper wars by saying unequivocally that Oliver and Laurel are done for the moment. Stephen Amell said it and a lot of people thought it was just an actor and no need to believe him. This is the voice of the EPs and WB confirming it.

He's interested in QC's Applied Tech division. That suggests he'll be wanting to work on something scientific or technological. Since he's a vigilante rival of Oliver's, as well as a business and romantic one, maybe he's started on his vigilante road but found he needs better technology to do it. No need to start shrinking yet.

Wow, the show really is making it clear that, at this point in time at least, Oliver and Laurel are done. Lots of good reason why it was Felicity and not Diggle and Sara, even beyond the romantic beat which is the one that struck me the most. If they were going to sell the manor scene, they had to start re-connecting Oliver and Felicity again after having dropped them for half a dozen episodes. . Welcome to the board, Nanrad. Laurel joined Oliver's school when she was 14 (grade nine makes sense). It seems logical to think Oliver and Tommy were friends from long before -- their parents were business associates and hung out in the same millionaires club, I got the sense that Robert and Moira had known Tommy's mother and Tommy said that Robert Queen had been more of a father to him than his own, which I took to mean that when Tommy's mother died and Malcolm disappeared, Tommy started spending his time around the Queen manor and being included in the father/son type stuff that Robert did with Oliver. The way I put it together, Oliver and Tommy were best friends from the time they were young. Oliver was the leader and Tommy, an easy-going Type-B was his sideman. Then at 14 Laurel enrolled in their school. At that age, girls are interested in boys and relationships and Laurel, seeing Oliver as not only cute but rich and the alpha-male, targeted him. Because Tommy was his friend, Tommy was included too but for Laurel it was always about her relationship, and her future, with Oliver. After the boat went down, she may even have been a bit mad at Tommy for being alive while Oliver (and Sara) were dead and that's why she dismissed him as a potential partner. Tommy was actually better for her, but he didn't have Oliver drive or his charisma, or his status. Laurel was the ex-girlfriend rather than their friend. That's what she says. But since she was planning a future with pre-boat Oliver in spite of his womanizing, I think the real problem is that she doesn't think he's even as good as pre-boat Oliver. The 'tell' is that she was a great girlfriend; the 'show' not so much. She set up a plan for her life with Oliver and refused to listen to everyone telling her she wasn't ready for it, from Oliver (sleeping around with other women and dropping out of every school he's enrolled in and partying all the time) to Quentin, who doesn't like him, to Sara who tries to tell her that Oliver is not ready to move in with her. She later does the same thing to Tommy, decides that he should ask Oliver for a job at his club and even though she's right, she steamrolls over Tommy and humiliates him because she's so sure that she's right and he's not doing what she wants him to do. Add to that, in her relationships with other people she's self-centered and manipulative. She does it to her mother, to her father, and addiction or not, she's awful when Sara returns. So while Oliver may have dreamed of her as the perfect girlfriend he done wrong, it seems like it was a pretty shallow relationship all round and they're both better out of it.. Yes. Maybe I could have bought Oliver/Laurel if Felicity hadn't turned up (more likely I wouldn't have been watching the show). I might have gone with Oliver/Sara if I hadn't met Felicity first But just like Stephen Amell/David Ramsey, as you say it's the connection between the character that sells the show.

My feelings about Laurel (which pretty much echo yours) aside, it was kind of a weird statement since Laurel was already in university and living in her own because Oliver said earlier her apartment hadn't changed since he had left. And Quentin had buried himself in his work and various bottles. Maybe she felt guilty at leaving a job undone?

Good for EBR -- Felicity wouldn't be Felicity without the ponytail and glassess. When I see her without them, I keep wondering Who is this character? She's gorgeous and all but she's not Felicity. I both love and hate shoes. I love how they look but I can walk in those high heels for only about five minutes before my feet start hurting. (On House, the women doctors wore high heels all the time. They did a BTS interview year 3 during a dress rehearsal and everyone was wearing their TV close but when you looked at Jennifer Morrison's feet, she had on pink fuzzy slippers so it's good to know I'm not the only one. I noticed that now on Once Upon A Time she spends her time in boots with flat heels.)

Whoops. taking it out now.