#400 plus notes

Compare it to how she rushes toward him.

She is overwhelmed by seeing him.

Meanwhile, he’s just soaking her in.

I LOVE this contrast for two reasons. First, it really brings home the different ways each of them have been anticipating this moment:

Felicity has been missing Oliver with every beat of her heart for 20 years, a part of her always yearning toward him. She’s been getting less patient, more frantic, the closer the times comes for her to join him.

Meanwhile Oliver has had to be patient. Unlike Felicity who was busy living her life, being a hero, raising their children, running her company while half her heart was elsewhere with Oliver, Oliver has had nothing to do but wait. And dream. And plan (because you can tell he meticulously planned this moment down to the very last detail).

Second, it accentuates their core personality traits, and parallels their very first meeting:

Oliver is still, steady, grounded, certain, and magnetic, with a gravitational pull. When he approached her for the first time in 1x03, he stood still and waited for her to notice him. Meanwhile he was drawn to her brightness, fascinated by her energy. The same thing applies in this last first meeting. He’s just completely taken with her. 

Felicity, meanwhile, is buzzing, energetic, bursting with life. When Oliver first approached her in 1x03, she was overwhelmed, nervous, and so attracted to him that she completely lost her chill. When she sees him again here, it’s like she’s meeting him again for the first time. She’s so nervous. Unlike the first time, she knows and trusts that he loves her with his whole heart, but it’s been so long since she’s seen him. She’s forgotten, just a little, what it feels like to be loved so completely. So when she sees him here again, just like the first time, she’s overwhelmed by him - by his steady, boundless love just for her. And again, she loses her chill a little 😂

It’s how they have always been, it’s who they are. Oliver is patience and fortitude while Felicity is an overachiever, never content to settle. He is stillness, she is movement.