[Mind Your Surroundings: Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and Other Superhero Universes]

1 hour ago, Mellowyellow said:

Did they forever? Hubby thinks they will make a new series and Wally will come back! He knows nothing in terms of goss but just assumes Wally will be back! 

Should I tell him Wally is not coming back? 

From what the creators said in the panel yesterday Wally is really for real gone.

But also this isn't my first or seventeenth rodeo, and nobody ever truly dies in comic books or comic book shows? I'm gonna be reading spoilers once the episodes start airing, that's for sure.

[Mind Your Surroundings: Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and Other Superhero Universes]

12 hours ago, Delphi said:

http://io9.gizmodo.com/young-justice-outsiders-reveals-its-new-heroes-and-the-1797134284

Young Justice news.   @dtissagirl, I'm sure you'll be thrilled at Stephanie's inclusion.   

I'm super conflicted. On one hand, one of my fave characters of all time, on the other, they killed one of my favorite 'ships ever when they disappeared Wally. I still haven't watched the S2 finale. Hee.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

8 minutes ago, LeighAn said:

If I had to speculate on the writers morivations I wonder if the whole Marvel shows making Aroiw/Flarrow look like a watered down kids show in comparison, and all the critique comparing the two universes, got the writers and their egoes a little bruised and this plot line is a result.

Yeah, this would be my spec as well. And then we can add the whole Felicity and Friends thing last season that also left lots of butthurt in its wake, it totally explains why we're getting a misery porn episode right now, even though it doesn't exactly fit the narrative at this point ["does Oliver like killing" feels like an S2 question, not an S5 question], and that might unintentionally end up retconning 100+ episodes of established motivation for their main character. But it's not like Guggenheim ever cared for that. LOL.

 

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

5 minutes ago, LeighAn said:

So the man pain exploration is just an unfortunate side effect of the fact that the villains entire purpose this season is to cause Oliver man pain *shrug* 

I tend to think it's the other way around, that they created a villain specifically to explore the zeitgeist of manpain. Guggie wanted an in to the misery porn game he's seeing everywhere else, but he's aware that his show is a soapy drama at 8pm on the CW, so he can't do it all season long, but by the lords of trope cannibalization, he'll devote an entire episode to it.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

I don't think torturing a character is manpain [duh]. But I do think this episode is part of a pattern that all sorts of media are going through right now: the idea that complete deconstruction/breakdown of male characters [and it almost always happen to white males] to the point of abject misery is some sort of higher, deeper, more complex story. The manpain doesn't belong to the character, it's embedded in the fabric of the narrative. It's been drilled into the heads of Hollywood writers that [white] man suffering great amounts of pain is the current epitome of storytelling. Man feeling pain is put above anyone else feeling pain by the entire industry [and that's the definition of manpain: assuming a man's pain is the most important one], and thus large amounts of stories must address that in the current zeitgeist. And this is Arrow going into the pattern of narrative manpain that I've been seeing everywhere lately.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

14 minutes ago, way2interested said:

Who knows? That techno babble could actually be just that.

Wait, is the team breaking up? 518 kind of implies that at least Oliver, Diggle, and Felicity are still trying to stop Prometheus, and 519 is Team Arrow vs. Team Felicity, so when would the team break up? Just part of 518?

I'm thinking most of 518, but yeah, just that ep.

- Oliver shuts everything down at the end of 517

- Diggle has to rally up the noobs to get Oliver back in 518 while I'm guessing Felicity is off getting deeper into Helix [maybe she is pissed Oliver disbands the team, I don't know]. Team gets back together by the end of 518. Minus Felicity, maybe?

- Then 519 is Team Arrow vs. Team Felicity, which I'm wondering if it's not ultimately about getting Felicity back from her Helix downward spiral.

I figure the team-ness issues are over then, but the O/F issues remain, which is why they get trapped in a room in 520 until they solve them.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

3 minutes ago, LeighAn said:

Or- wait till the episode airs before deciding the show is telling us Oliver likes killing?

The entire point of this thread is to NOT wait until we know for sure to talk about it endlessly.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

1 minute ago, Mrs. de Winter said:

So he enjoys killing but was happy to hang up the hood and live in the burbs with Felicity.  I guess cooking took the place of killing? 

BUT WHAT WAS HE COOKING DUN DUN DUN

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

2 minutes ago, thegirlsleuth said:

I think the closest they got to this was when he tortured the general at the end of season 3.  I actually found season 4 confusing because with the general's death I thought they were kicking off his flashback descent into real darkness, but then season four showed him fighting against injustice again which I assume might be one of those "Oh, crap.  We got another season" reversals.

I have this [completely unfounded] theory that their plans for S4 flashbacks were something else entirely that they realized they couldn't afford for whatever reason, that they had to scrape and go back to the island because filming in a public park + casting Poppy cost them like, 17 dollars.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

5 minutes ago, Trisha said:

“Our hope is that you will look at Oliver’s killing in a completely different light and look at it in a totally different way. And look at his motivations for killing in a different way, in a more complex, more nuanced way."

HAHAHAHA LOLNO, GUGGIE.

Like, seriously, he's saying "our hope is I'm gonna give you a ~shocker~ dialogue line that is obviously just another piece of plotty driven shit on our 109th episode that'll make you look back at 108 previous hours of television in a different way", oh, go fuck a cactus, hack showrunner.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

It doesn't even look to me like they have a second option, because they have never shown anything remotely close to Oliver enjoying killing someone [guessing the flashbacks will go there in this ep? But it'll be the first time], so if it turns out that hey, Oliver likes killing, it's basically retconning the entire show.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

6 minutes ago, Carrie Ann said:

Even better would be if he only thinks he likes it, because he was being tortured and because he's confusing a feeling of safety/control with a desire/enjoyment in killing, and that he realizes that by the end of the season.

This is the only thing that makes sense to me, tbh. Chase getting Oliver to such a breakdown point that he'll admit to being a monster, and maybe even believing he is one, but this is the lowest point because we're only at episode 17 and there are still 6 episodes for Dig and Felicity to pep talk him back into hero.

I wonder if the flashbacks in this episode are gonna go extra hammy with Oliver killing people, to go with the I want to/I liked it line.

But egads, the potential for the dismount here to be a full head first fall is ginormous.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

7 minutes ago, statsgirl said:

I guess the spoiler part is that Felicity is at Helix because the Arrow cave doesn't have the computing capability for a 4-D array, whatever that might be. And why would you parse it (?) in a real time algorithm, which would negate the whole point of a 4-d array.

The thing is, this makes very little sense, because a 4D array just means programming multiple arrays into the code [used to program in C a lifetime ago and we used 3D arrays all the time. Adding an extra array would mean more brackets and commas, but that's about it]. Which is what the OP was saying -- Arrow's technobable is just computer programing related words put together, but it doesn't mean anything.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

I'm gonna need this to segue into 518 being Oliver sitting alone in a room listening to a Smiths best of record.
 

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

11 minutes ago, Midnight Lullaby said:

I know that but I'm talking from my POV as a viewer, not from the characters' POV. That was a convo I would have been interested to see a year ago, months ago..now not in the slightest.

Oh, yeah, me too, this kind of storytelling they're doing makes me wanna punch Guggie up the nose with a full print out of TVTropes.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

11 minutes ago, Midnight Lullaby said:

It would be a good time for Felicity to bring up her abandonment issues regarding that situation. Still this convo should have happened a year ago or at the beginning of this season imo

If they talk about the demon spawn in a flashback, then ~technically~ it happened at the beginning of the season. And we're only seeing it now because hahahalol this is what us suckers get when we watch this show.

[Small Talk: The Quiver]

I really enjoyed BATB.

When the animation came out I was a 15 year old ~rebel~ [lol] and not at all into any Disney stuff, but my sister was 8 back then, and she was OBSESSED with the movie, and watched it pretty much daily once it came out on VCR [lol I'm old], so I kinda knew the entire thing by heart by proxy of sharing a TV with her. I haven't seen the animation in decades, though, and I think that probably helped in enjoying the live action movie.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

I was thinking Anatoly, if only for the fact that there's NO WAY he'd be happy going back to the island, and I enjoy it when he's cranky.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

20 minutes ago, Chaser said:

5x18 is called Disbanded. Diggle has to keep the newbies in line. Team Arrow v Team Felicity. Felicity heading up Helix. 

Does Felicity leave the Team?

I just had a thought that maybe Helix was built FOR Felicity? [Whether her father is involved or not, Alena already knew who Felicity is, and there's that quote from Wendy saying Felicity had a hand in creating Helix? I know, it's Wendy, but it would work here]. And this is the big Helix secret, and they offer her leadership, but she'd have to quit Team Arrow for it. And she's tempted in 519 [the Team Arrow vs. Team Felicity ep], and then 520 locks her and Oliver in a room and they solve their ~issues FINALLY OH MY GOD.

And then maybe Felicity decided to multitask and/or incorporate Helix into Team Arrow.

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

I get what they're trying to do with Felicity, and I'm really digging the whole Helix storyline, but every time they say she's in a "really dark place" I just wanna LOL forever.

This is still the most chillax and aloof downward spiral ever, especially considering we *have* seen Felicity in darker places -- mid S3 when Oliver "died", mid S4 with the paralysis, even her flashback story when Cooper died was more hardcore than this. But then these hacks are terrified of letting Felicity cry or have any sort of outburst, so we have cheerful descent into darkness via Peppy Hackers Incorporated. It's so funny.

[Small Talk: The Quiver]

9 hours ago, Delphi said:

@dtissagirl have you checked out ultimate beastmaster on Netflix?  I don't think it's your ting but I'm hooked and interested to know how it looks in other countries. 

I had never even heard of it until right now, but a quick look at local social media, and apparently it's big here too. It's just not for me. The Brazilian presenters are people I abhor, and muscular people doing muscular things tend to bore me rather than entertain me. :)

[Spoiler Discussion Thread]

8 hours ago, statsgirl said:

They need to tell us why Felicity started dating Billy in the 5x20 episodes, especially since she had been sleeping with Oliver since their break-up.

I figure we're gonna find out O/F had a one night stand during hiatus, not that they were sleeping together often.

[Mind Your Surroundings: Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and Other Superhero Universes]

At least it's... validating? comforting? when you think your main dudebro showrunner is a jerkface dickwad, and then HE IS?

Also, I liked the irony of Kevin Smith dismissing 12 year old girls as a valid portion of the audience at the start of the panel, only for a young girl to ask the only Arrow question, and about the romantic storyline. Maybe actively start writing for 12 year old girls, Berlanti Prod. They rule the world.

[Felicity Smoak: Bitch With Wifi]

Yeah, agreed. Nobody at Helix seems to care about consequences of anything they do, and that is something that they can use as a narrative beat for Felicity to snap out of being reckless.

Also, I know people keep wondering who's the boss of Helix, but I'm gonna be disappointed if it turns out an anarchist hacker collective has a big boss. Which would segue well into Felicity taking over [yes, please], at whixh point they would STOP being anarchists [you can't be an anarchist with a boss setting rules], and give them more clear ideals and purposes that take consequences into consideration.

[Felicity Smoak: Bitch With Wifi]

Yeah, that's the impression I got as well so far. It's not even that they think themselves above the law [which is the vigilante conundrum], but that they think that laws and rules and regulations are completely irrelevant if they have a goal to achieve, because they can easily circumvent everything that keeps society in check. Which makes them dangerous, but not inherently evil.