It's not just the domestic stuff (although seeing the Green Arrow making cupcakes, talking about making chicken cordon blue and basically having Felicity as his sugar momma was very distressing). It's the mere fact that Oliver plays second fiddle to Felicity. He doesn't aspire to be a good hero as much as he aspires to be a worthy boyfriend to Felicity. Just take a look at their final scene in Broken Hearts, where Oliver is practically begging her to forgive him. It was one of the most irritating scenes of season and that covers a lot of ground. Yes, Oliver is less macho now than he was in season 1. But that alone would have been forgivable if there wasn't another character who ALWAYS has the moral high ground on him. A character who doesn't even deserve to have the moral high ground based on a lot of her actions and decisions.
Thanks for share, Amarice. Metaphorically or literally, it sums up perfectly what's happened to this show
Thanks for share, Amarice. Metaphorically or literally, it sums up perfectly what's happened to this show
I don't belong to those fans who think that Felicity "has Oliver's balls in her purse", but I'm getting a bit tired of seeing Felicity lash out at him (or make snarky/snippy comments) over complex and complicated issues, and Oliver just standing there looking like a whipped dog. If the writers didn't implicitly expect us to accept Felicity's version of things, they could have let Oliver actually challenge her, rather than constantly praising her and begging for her forgiveness. I think it's this imbalance that has given many viewers the impression that Olicity is a dysfunctional relationship. If we add that Felicity is never called out for ANYTHING she does, but constantly praised in some of the most blatant examples of character shilling that I have ever seen on television, I'd say that she has turned into a textbook example of a writers' pet.
Although the showrunners keep assuring us that "Arrow" will return to a season one vibe, I highly doubt that they will ever return to the kind of more nuanced character portrayal that we got in season one, where the key female characters were actually allowed to make mistakes and have flaws, and being called out by other characters for these mistakes and flaws. Thea often behaved as an irresponsible brat, and yet we had enough information about her difficult situation after the Queen's Gambit disaster to understand her behavior. Laurel was portrayed as headstrong and sometimes rash in her judgments, and yet in her case there was also enough on screen backstory to help us understand her clashes with Quentin and Oliver. Moira was one of the most fascinating examples of a character who is both a loving mother, who turns into a lioness to protect her children, and a weak woman, who lets herself be lured into doing reprehensible things in order to keep up a facade. Felicity, on the other hand, often feels one-dimensional, since the writers main aim with her characterization seems to be to provide some kind of audience avatar for the Felicity/Olicity fans who flock to their twitter timelines. It's as if they are so afraid to change or challenge the features that they believe made her popular in the first place that they simply cannot let other characters question her actions, or get into conflict with her. This is IMHO a very good description of Felicity's lack of character development:
I would very much agree with you, anon. Felicity’s stunted character development can all be traced back to Felicity’s initial purpose of being a one-off character. Her role in regards to the show and to Oliver was continually upgraded throughout season 1 until she was a full-fledged member of the team and then…she was only upgraded in terms of her’s and Oliver’s relationship. First, she was “his girl”, then it became this overused ‘will they won’t they’ troupe, and currently they’ve gotten together and broken up so many times it’s almost hard to count. Throughout this “development” of their relationship, Felicity as a character never changed. While Oliver still continued trying to become a better hero (which stopped all of the sudden in the season 3 finale), I would really agree that Felicity still remained a quirky, nerdy tech genius as you said, anon, having no compelling arc for her character outside of Oliver. In fact, she even admits, that she “is losing herself in Oliver”, which, contrary to her mother’s opinion, is not a good thing. Her becoming CEO, struggling to recover when paralyzed, her father being a criminal when she fights criminals almost every day were all plots resolved in a matter of a few episodes, sometimes even just one. All of these could have been possible stimulators for her to grow as a character, but she forever stays and acts the same as when she was introduced in her first episode. To me as a writer, it’s almost unnatural; no one could have realistically gone through everything she has and still remain the same as she was when it all started. But, having heard all of the Arrow writers’ comments on the character and fans' opinions, I know why she has gone through no character development. People liked Felicity because she was that quirky, nerdy tech genius and unlike most of the characters on Arrow, most viewers watching the show can’t pull parkour moves like Oliver or wield a bo-staff like Sara. She acted as the relatable character, and, more increasingly, the fan self-insert character. Anyone who was a nerd could be Felicity. The only “development” she has undergone as a character is absurdly expanding her skills to cover almost every nerd’s skillset whether it’s computer science or history, Felicity has got it. She represents the “ideal” nerd, who knows everything and can do anything, and therefore is the glorified nerd Mary Sue. No one wants her to change. Therefore, she undergoes no character development in order to accommodate the needy fans and the lazy writers.
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