Arrow liveblogging, 3.21
-ooh *nice* with the intro. I saw a post that made me wonder if that’s what it meant, and indeed they did that!
-*Wow* than montage was well-done. And, all the checks for (entirely psychological) brainwashing - exhaustion, disorientation, the message...
-*my lord*?
-”my oath of mercy on your friends is premised by your fealty” that is a very nice sentence. ‘kill your friend to keep me from killing your friends’ doesn’t particularly make sense, though
-maybe give me a weapon I actually have training and such in?
-OK, if Ra’s didn’t know what Oliver was seeing, maybe sentence makes more sense. This is all still confusing though
-So did they like [finally] call people to get the emergency broadcast going on and all?
-ooh HIVE. This is a *really weird* connection though...
-Ra’s has some major confidence in his brainwashing to be sending Oliver out already!
-I love everything about this. Practical training! Certain competence! Weird domesticity type things!
-(However, the other side - OK, trying to remember - does Laurel know that Nyssa kidnapped and threatened to kill her mother and drove her sister to suicide? And if not, is this going to come up in the future or? Because, um)
-eee. Also, Bechdel test, yay!
-eee I loved the bit of this scene in the preview clip and eee
-mm, bringing the connection to Sara up, that is an important in the interpersonal, than you for explicating
-wait why can’t she leave the loft? Is she hiding the recovery, or?
-Well I think we all know what this is referring back to, secrets and all
-Maybe try hiding? Also, wait, so the League must have know she was in Starling then? Because we know Oliver didn’t (speaking of secrets...)
-for her betrayal?
-OK, so they do know about Nyssa? Or Laurel just told them? Did they like have any reactions?
-What did you think they were going to do, have him be heir while he clearly hates them all?
-eee Nyssa
-OK I guess that explains why not hiding. Appreciated.
-Go Laurel!
-The character things of Laurel saying that to Diggle are *really* interesting
-*want* (Thea)
-*Yes*. All the insist-on-actually-being-told-what’s-going-on
-Yeah *way* enough of that argument/line/whatever. The-a! (To be clear, this is aimed at model!Oliver, not Felicity)
-I need better typed feeling expressions. Anyway, Nyssa\!\! Nyssa’s line\!\!
-OK, so laying out already - he says he’s here to bring her back, not kill her. (Sidenote - again, seriously, *how does the League travel*?)
-That does not actually answer her question!
-I am really not happy with how they keep having people who should not be able to defeat Nyssa doing it. I’m going to go headcanon that she wasn’t actually giving it her all, since as we see she is resigned to death, set up the place and everything
-Canary cry!
-Do she and Diggle have some kind of ear protection?
-He... didn’t really seem that different. I mean, aside from the matter of the targeting and stuff. Like, different, but not unrecognizable-level, not for someone who’s seen him as Arrow. Though, maybe that’s it. Arrow here, Oliver not. Like seeing the mask without the person behind it.
-’sure that there’d be something, that he’d give them something to show it wasn’t true. But there was nothing’
-This does make me wonder what Oliver actually was thinking. Honestly, I doubt he was thinking farther into the future. Like ‘I need to comply while resisting, it will probably be horrible, I need to endure it’ kind of thing. That’s how he tends to be. Because, well, any kind of long-term thought clearly ends at ‘either they break me or they kill me’
-Team Arrow needs to get into the Winter Soldier fandom. Like, for encouragement. He is alive. Broken, brainwashed, whatever, he’s alive. That does matter
-Yeah it seems they (including Oliver) were thinking of it as a kind of... like-prison-limbo. Not-here, not-good, but alive. Which, makes sense, actually. As a coping mechanism, but also - one thing they haven’t really had in this whole thing is long-term.
-He doesn’t answer that question either! (”friends of yours?”)
-So where is Malcolm staying now? (And *why are they still letting him just wander around*?)
-The tone in which Malcolm said ‘heir to the demon’ amuses me for some reason
-Thank you. I’m glad that finally got brought up. (Though wow it makes it even more discordant how they’re treating Malcolm)
-They just keep having Malcolm swing around in completely noncoherent ways. Like, why did he just decide to help?
-Stop. fridge-etc-ing. your women.
-That’s such a weird mundane thing - like, he has their cellphone numbers
-So I’ve been mildly annoyed how they’ve a few times been having Diggle say out-of-character things that they just wanted someone to say for other stuff. This... is kind of taking that up to the then some. I am more than mildly annoyed
-Is Laurel surrogating Nyssa over not having been able to save Sara?
-I feel they should have started setting up this conflict earlier to get it to work better now. They could totally have done it - Nyssa’s been in town for a while, plenty of time for them to have had an argument over it
-I joined the League of Assassins and got brainwashed?
-So this person took them in, watched their son - and they really did just let her die? Like, I was was like ‘um, excuse me?’ about this before when it was being set up. But they seriously just went and did it?
-Go Thea!
-Yay Thea here with them!
-People, unbrainwashing is a process. Just because the momentary challenge in the height of things didn’t work doesn’t mean nothing will
-So are the League people going to tell Oliver off for not having Felicity searched?
-Well this is not where I was expecting that line (works well, though)
-no shit, Ra’s
-Why didn’t she hide it *somewhere else*. Also eep, Ra’s as parent
-So is there something he would have wanted of her or does he just want to insult her because, well, abusive. Like, what would ‘the warrior she once was’ have done, in his opinion? Stayed with the League and sword to the new heir? That seems to be the opposite of the... way he’s phrasing the values
-Have I mentioned loving Nyssa?
-And now Ra’s is making creepy face at Nyssa (of a... slightly different kind)
-Ra’s has a very weird definition of breaking your rival. (I am reading constructing a story to justify doing what he wants, which is not killing her. Not certain if self-deception is also involved)
-So OK, does this mean that there was the potential for Ra’s and Damien Darhk or whatever they called him to get married? This needs to be a crack fic right now
-Well given that Ra’s has been giving Oliver creepy-face and Nyssa abusive creepy-face I guess this gives him the great opportunity to be rapist by proxy to both of them. How cheerful
-...Are they going to put her on suicide watch? Like, he might not care about her wishes, but how are they going to keep her from carrying this particular wish out?
-So we saw a bit of it last episode, but really getting abusive/emotional-sadist!Ra’s here (and it’s very well done, and quite a character as such)
-I was about to say eep past tense, but ah, no
-Seriously, read about brainwashing. Read about all those things. Watch Winter Solider or whatever. Our minds can be twisted in the most horrible of ways, but they are resilient too
-What the hell? They didn’t tell her *this whole time*. They just let her mourn her boyfriend *on top* of her brother when they knew he wasn’t dead and could have told her at any moment. What the *hell*?
-So I was reading a thing (http://jbuffyangel.tumblr.com/post/117664557973/wedding-theory-8-the-final-3-episodes-the-how) that mentioned how Thea and Roy need to be saying goodbye next, because there’s no way to have a relationship with him not on the show. I’m not going to actually hope for anything other than goodbye, but if they wanted it to work, it totally could - he can’t come back to Starling, but she can go to him, and so they could just have that offscreen, if they wanted
-:( Laurel! That was the perfect thing to show and oh :(!
-And oh, Felicity went to be alone, and *there* to cry. *feels*
-Ah, so that must be the betrayal
-oh dear (where did he *get* that?) (And how does this virus work? Because, this is the modern day US. On one hand, we have anti-epidemic work, but then on the other hand, we’ve got all the mobility that gives the threat of a *pan*demic)
