Arrow liveblogging, 3.21
-ooh *nice* with the intro. I saw a post that made me wonder if thatās 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*?
-āmy oath of mercy on your friends is premised by your fealtyā that is a very nice sentence.Ā ākill your friend to keep me from killing your friendsā doesnāt particularly make sense, though
-maybe give me a weapon I actually have training and such in?
-OK, if Raās didnāt 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...
-Raās 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 canāt 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 didnāt (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-whatās-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\!\! Nyssaās line\!\!
-OK, so laying out already - he says heās 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. Iām going to go headcanon that she wasnāt 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... didnāt really seem that different. I mean, aside from the matter of the targeting and stuff. Like, different, but not unrecognizable-level, not for someone whoās seen him as Arrow. Though, maybe thatās it. Arrow here, Oliver not. Like seeing the mask without the person behind it.
-āsure that thereād be something, that heād give them something to show it wasnāt true. But there was nothingā
-This does make me wonder what Oliver actually was thinking. Honestly, I doubt he was thinking farther into the future. LikeĀ āI need to comply while resisting, it will probably be horrible, I need to endure itā kind of thing. Thatās how he tends to be. Because, well, any kind of long-term thought clearly ends atĀ āeither they break me or they kill meā
-Team Arrow needs to get into the Winter Soldier fandom. Like, for encouragement. He is alive. Broken, brainwashed, whatever, heās 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 havenāt really had in this whole thing is long-term.
-He doesnāt answer that question either! (āfriends of yours?ā)
-So where is Malcolm staying now? (And *why are they still letting him just wander around*?)
-The tone in which Malcolm saidĀ āheir to the demonā amuses me for some reason
-Thank you. Iām glad that finally got brought up. (Though wow it makes it even more discordant how theyāre 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.
-Thatās such a weird mundane thing - like, he has their cellphone numbers
-So Iāve been mildly annoyed how theyāve 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 - Nyssaās 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 likeĀ āum, excuse me?ā 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 didnāt work doesnāt 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, Raās
-Why didnāt she hide it *somewhere else*. Also eep, Raās 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 wouldĀ āthe warrior she once wasā have done, in his opinion? Stayed with the League and sword to the new heir? That seems to be the opposite of the... way heās phrasing the values
-Have I mentioned loving Nyssa?
-And now Raās is making creepy face at Nyssa (of a... slightly different kind)
-Raās 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 Raās and Damien Darhk or whatever they called him to get married? This needs to be a crack fic right now
-Well given that Raās 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!Raās here (and itās 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 didnāt tell her *this whole time*. They just let her mourn her boyfriend *on top* of her brother when they knew heĀ wasnāt 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 thereās no way to have a relationship with him not on the show. Iām not going to actually hope for anything other than goodbye, but if they wanted it to work, it totally could - he canāt 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, weāve got all the mobility that gives the threat of a *pan*demic)
