apinknightmare

My comment was about him not admitting they're propping up characters - not about his answers to other questions. He should be nicer to people on Tumblr, but he is never, ever going to admit that they're using well-liked characters to prop up new/unliked ones. It's because Felicity's identity issue this season is whether she's just Oliver's crush (/assistant) or if she exists outside of the foundry (as Ray's crush/assistant). Isolating her from the team is how they're having her explore her "identity," since apparently she can't have one without a man, and it allows them to bring Ray into the plot, which seems to be the plot of a completely different show.

It's not like he's ever going to admit it.

I guess I'm just not sure how much hurt there's going to be between Ray and Felicity when they do end things. Felicity knows Ray lost his fiancee not even a year ago. Ray knows that Felicity has someone in her life that was more than a friend (not sure if he knows that person is back from the dead or not). They've both been pretty straightforward about the emotional things they're still holding onto. I'm sure that there will be some hurt, but when they realize that it's not going to work out that they'll see the relationship for what it was: a rebound. I think their parting of ways will be bittersweet and amicable.

She said "first time" for sure. Seems like DR said something that had to be bleeped too, since SA seems to look at him. IDK.

Felicity has been alone now for nearly three years, and loved Oliver in some capacity for at least one, if not more. I don't know if she knows she loves him/is in love with him, but she's shown it a hell of a lot more than Oliver has for someone who's told her outright more than once how he feels. She's lonely, she wants to have a life - she's said as much, and the man she seems to want to have that life with has made himself unavailable to her multiple times over the past few months and returned from the "dead" hell bent on being stupid. Oliver's not an option for her, she doesn't want to be alone, and Ray's there and telling her all the wonderful things that she wishes Oliver would. She's not in a good emotional place right now, and she took comfort in the body of a man that she likes and enjoys being with (unfortunately for me, as someone who ultimately watches this). She's not in a committed relationship, she didn't cheat on anyone. If she told Oliver she loved him and wanted to be with him but couldn't for whatever reason and then did this then yeah, maybe I'd judge her a bit. This Felicity gets not one iota of my judgement. She can sit by me anytime.

He has explained to her (and Diggle) why he's doing what he's doing - he thinks Malcolm is the only one who can teach him what he needs to learn in order to defeat Ra's (and how can she tell him otherwise? She wasn't there -she's never faced Ra's, and she doesn't know how to fight), and he's got to protect Thea. Of course, we found out at the end of the last episode that he's acting stupidly because he's angry Ra's was able to beat him and he felt helpless about it. And Diggle only managed to get that out of him while they were chained to a floor getting ready to die. Felicity has been fighting for Oliver for a year and half now. She's been fighting for Oliver, himself, apart from their personal relationship. She fought for him when he decided he didn't want to kill anymore. She fought for him when he was going crazy over Slade. She fought for him when he wanted to give himself up. She fought for him when he wanted to give up because she thought he failed his loved ones. She risked her LIFE in order to help him defeat Slade. She tried to get him to see reason when he wanted to retreat back into the hood after Sara died. She stood by him through his questionable decision making in the earlier half of the season, with bringing Malcolm under his protection, and she supported him when he found out Thea was Sara's killer. When he was packing up to leave to go to Nanda Parbat, she told him that she didn't want him to go but that she knew better than to ask him to stay, and he thanked her for it. Like...at what point does Oliver start being responsible for himself? How can she fight for him when he's not even being honest with himself about why he's doing the things that he's doing? All last episode he was determined to do whatever to keep Thea from being responsible for Malcolm's murder (and she helped him when he asked her to), until he admitted that wasn't really it. There's being a good friend to someone, and then there's allowing someone to use you as a crutch and enabling them. Felicity has been a good friend to Oliver, and she's being a good friend to him by pushing him - by not putting up with his BS and challenging his poor decision making. She's been doing that since the beginning of the season, and she finally reached her breaking point. To me, at this point, it's not even about love or friendship. Oliver's got to find a reason to fight for and love Oliver independent of Felicity dragging him along and giving him pep talks at every turn. He's been through a lot, I get that. But his personal growth isn't 100% on Felicity - and thus far she's shouldered more than her fair share of the burden. ETA: Even after Thea, the person he loves more than anyone and has nearly died to keep safe, begged him not to go and fight Ra's because she couldn't bear to lose him, he STILL WENT. So, it's not a love triangle issue at all here - it's an Oliver needing to be stupid and pigheaded and reckless in order to keep Malcolm Merlyn in the picture issue.

Yes, MG said it's in present day.

I was just looking at MG's Tumblr and the questions about Oliver finding out about Felicity and Ray. I wonder what exactly he thinks is going on between them? He saw them kissing, but then Felicity said the thing about fantasizing that he'd do things differently when he came back, indicating that maybe she hoped they could be together. So would he really be all that surprised to find out that they're dating or whatever?

The thought of this team trying to introduce alt universes and time travel honestly makes me queasy. They leave out so much important info in just a regular timeline, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to follow alt realities and keep track of who's in what time period. I really liked Sara, but I hope they don't Lazarus Pit her for this. I'm probably in the minority but I do think that resurrecting someone repeatedly does undermine the emotional journeys of the people around them. This is the third time Oliver's thought Sara died. It's the second time for the Lance family. I don't want to see all these people (including Diggle and Felicity) whose whole year has been driven by this one (stupid and not well thought out, yes) death come to the end of it only to see her pop up alive again and still be her. It's too much, I think. If it had been someone like Tommy who's only died once, maybe....I don't know. If she's still playing "Sara," I hope she's some kind of particle accelerator spawned clone or something. Also, would they Lazarus Pit her on Arrow and incorporate her into the storyline with the intention of her being spun off? Isn't that a big risk to take considering a series hasn't been ordered yet? I'm assuming it will be, but if TPTB didn't like it or whatever, would they bring her back on Arrow or just have her die AGAIN or go off never to be heard from again?

The question was whether she'd interact with Thea or other characters and he said "unfortunately not, you'll see why." Later someone asked about her interacting with Oliver or maybe Diggle (I can't remember which), and he also said no, so I think he caught the "or other characters" because in the original question and that really is a no for her interacting with anyone other than Felicity, although I wouldn't be surprised to see Ray pop up in a scene, because who knows with MG at this point. It seems like they wouldn't be able to resist putting her, Ray, and MS in a scene together, but MS and Ray have already met, so IDK. So, if MS isn't incapacitated from injury and they are there for something relatively minor that puts them in the hospital to either get them out of or into some action plot-wise (if they really are working off of the Public Enemy storyline from the Green Arrow comics) could be that MS says something about hospital sex in reference to a hot doctor or whatever.

Yeah, I think Ra's implied that he thought Nyssa was too emotionally driven in a bad way to run the League, especially compared to Oliver, who is also emotionally driven, but in a more positive way (for Ra's purposes). Since they apparently do have a code, I could see Ra's being worried that someone could rattle her by taking a swipe at someone she cares about and Nyssa leveling whatever she had to to get at them. Ra's knows that Oliver's instinct is to protect and that he's willing to maybe do some unpalatable (stupid) things and exercise restraint in getting justice. That's probably a more valuable leadership quality that he'd look for. And I suppose he figures he can teach Oliver to fight more easily than he can teach Nyssa to be someone other than she is. So I think the reason is going to be total bullshit, but I don't think it's because she's a lesbian, I think it's going to be because she's a woman and we just can't keep a handle on our dang emotions. She'd probably level a city whenever she had PMS!

I was thinking the injury would be major enough to require a trip to the hospital (a deep cut, a sprain or something), but not major enough to require an actual stay. Whatever it would take to get them to the hospital, where some kind of action happens. i mean, someone mentions hospital sex so how bad could it be? MG said that MS wouldn't be interacting with any other cast members (or something of the like), so I think that includes Ray. So maybe he's hurt and incapacitated? Or maybe Felicity will get a little story with just her mom outside of her two love interests? Dare to hope...

The Flash ep is set to air after the Arrow one, IIRC. So Felicity and Ray will go to CC after whatever happens in 3x18 (unless this changed?) So whatever has her at/in the hospital in that ep didn't happen in CC. I think we were discussing up thread that the hospital at this point seems to be the setting for something not necessarily related to someone being hurt - I know there's suppoosed to be an injury, but I think it might be somewhat minor and that MS and Felicity just happen to be there when something goes down?

Seriously, I'm actually surprised. I wonder if someone told him to tone it down? He even nicely addressed someone who said he was being hurtful. Has he been hacked? Haha

I don't think he did anything wrong, but I think it would be better to not respond to any tweets that refer to any part of the fanbase derogatorily, or if he likes to thank all the people who give him compliments, then maybe he should reply to her directly instead of posting it for his whole feed to see. I think it's an especially sensitive subject here because while a lot of people do hate Ray just because he's an iceberg in the ship waters, his detractors do have an actual point about his problematic behavior, and it's not just a case of "hating." It's not Brandon's fault - he is just doing his job and doing his best with what he's given, I just think it's smart for anyone to avoid minefield situations on social media if they can.

I don't know. Maybe we get an actual cliffhanger this year? Maybe he doesn't become Ra's, but with all the game-changing, crazy shit they claim to be doing, it seems like maybe he does? It really doesn't seem like enough time. Maybe he does turn Ra's down and Ra's rains shit down on him to make him rue the day. There's time enough for that, haha. But yeah, I just really think he's going to do it and the "shocker" is going to be that he's got a plan to take Ra's down. That he goes into it wanting to fight for Oliver Queen but knows that he can't with Ra's hanging over his head, so when he goes into it we believe he's resigning himself to giving up his humanity, but he's actually got a plan for once and is taking Ra's down to get it back so he can live his life? There's just the time thing...

Hopefully he gets his own custom bling.

Could be, but I don't think he said that as any kind of a tease. He said that he answered that way because anything else would give something away, and he wasn't going to give anything away.

I doubt it. If anything it's probably Roy biting the big one. It's a nice thought though, for Laurel at least.

Maybe those are the "other plans" MG was talking about when he mentioned that Diggle wouldn't be Green Lantern because DC wanted to do something else with him.

Well, a show about super heroes is going to need some villains.

No, he said he came across an illusionist who was dazzling - then he came across the same man 50 years later and he was dying. He said the magician can shake many things but one (death, I guess).

I don't understand how this would work. Where would they team up? In some random city? Or are all of them going to be in Central City and Starling City and just not interact with the Arrow or Flash? Or will they cross over too and this show will just be the common ground for the A/F castoffs? Are they all going to keep appearing on their home shows? Probably not, I guess that'd be over kill. These are all rhetorical questions since obviously no one has the answer, haha.

I think Ra's either gives him time to think about it (because Oliver's in his Arrow suit in the lair when he says, "Maybe I should become the next Ra's") and then makes all the things that he told Oliver would happen (the city turning against him, his friends turning against him, etc) happen in order to persuade him, OR I think Oliver turns him down, Ra's makes everyone hate him and then he takes him up on his offer. I think he'd probably have to accept without declining first in order to pull off an inside job on Ra's. And I also think there would probably have to be some kind of time jump to make it realistic, but this show isn't so concerned about realism, so. Then 3x20-23 = Oliver with Ra's. If they did a time jump, then maybe they could move ahead with the show, so that we pick back up in real time for the S4 premier instead of missing everything over the summer. Although they're planning a 3.5 comic, so maybe not.

I wonder if they'll be announcing a name change for season 4 to something like ARROW and the Justice League (of Starling City)