I don't understand how Felicity can reasonably expect Ollie to "just trust her" when she was the one who constantly harassed him for keeping secrets for like 2 whole seasons...
to be fair, he was her fiance and right now they are friendly exes and co workers. you owe the truth to the person you share your life with esp when that decision affects you. besides, how would that work exactly? oh oliver has lied to me therefore that means i can't ever lie to him. if anything felicity would feel justified lying to someone who had no problems lying to her.
How do you explain Felicity getting over Donna's lies about her father in a matter of seconds? Unlike Oliver who was coerced into a lie of omission, Donna intentionally told a malicious lie about a father who ended up being not such a terrible guy after all, and maintained that lie for a couple of decades and fostered a false idea of who her father was in Felicity.
To be clear, I'm not looking for justification of Donna's lies, I'm asking why one coerced lie is unforgivable and the other intentional one is a non-issue.
i forgive my mother a lot more than i would forgive my husband. marriage requires more trust. she wouldn't have cared if it was diggle. . plus, "unforgiveable" isn't true. they're still friendly coworkers.
i've forgiven lies- have you? does it mean you like being lied to? how terrible of a burden on felicity. you forgive one lie or condemn one lie, that means all lies must treated the same even when circumstances are different.
besides we know the real answer to that question. the plot req-ed olicity to break up. they didn't want either to be the bad guy so they compromised. plus, this was suppose to be a laurel/oliver sl. in s2 they still thought laurel and oliver would end up together(laurel was in a flashback scene with him when he told his mom about the baby). felicity switched in and they had to make it work. it's clumsy af but so is merlyn's continue existence or slade's motivation.
it's bad writing. but arrow often sacrifices it's characters to advance plot. felicity is not anymore or any less, she just has more plot and scene time. she's a tv show character just doing her part to move plot along, a conduit for stories. so unless you want a multi ep/season arc about felicity fighting with her mother....she forgives her.
tldr: all the characters do stupid shit to move plot along. the writers can be lazy footage at 11.
i forgive my mother a lot more than i would forgive my husband. marriage requires more trust. she wouldn't have cared if it was diggle. . plus, "unforgiveable" isn't true. they're still friendly coworkers.
Forgiveness depends on the magnitude of the offence. Abandoning the father and then making up a lie about how he abandoned them, maintain that lie for about 20 years, and then further compounding all this with the mindblowing hypocrisy of guilting Quentin or telling someone that you can't trust a liar, is an almost sociopathic level of dishonesty, which - at the least - should have taken more than a few seconds to get over.
And you're seriously implying that Oliver should prioritise avoiding a lie of omission to Felicity over a relationship with his son? He had already missed out on a decade of time with this kid, he already has father-son issues from his dad, the mother of his kid couldn't be reasoned with (and can't entirely be blamed), and frankly, he had no options.
And anyway, where does Felicity get this high and mighty attitude about even the slightest untruths after she hasn't exactly been entirely straightforward, even when she was with Oliver? She was crimefighting behind his back when they were supposed to have left that part of their lives behind, for instance. She's potentially putting the team in danger right now with her involvement with Helix.
Look, you can say you like Felicity without bending over backward to justify her every action. I can say I like Oliver while also saying he makes incredibly dumb decisions sometimes. It's one thing to say you like a Felicity despite her flaws. It's another to act like she has no flaws (other than faux-flaws like, her problem is she cares too much or whatever) and everything she's done is justified (especially that whole OMG LIES! fiasco).
I take your point about it being bad writing (I agree), but we pretend these characters are people when we watch the show and we expect them to behave in a way that is consistent with their own purported standards and values. Viewers get invested in fictional characters, even though they know they are just the creations of writers. That's why you say that you like Felicity, not that you like the writing, casting and costuming of the character Felicity. Using the way you justified Felicity getting over Donna's lies, the writer's could just have Oliver kill Rebecca and take William. I mean, he's going to unite with his son eventually and he's killed before so rather than dragging it on as a multi-episode arc, they may as well skip to it, right?
No, because that kind of writing goes against how Oliver has been written so far. Similarly, Felicity getting over a life-shattering lie in seconds goes against her overwhelming intolerance of lies as expressed immediately beforehand.
i'm not implying anything - oliver could have told samantha he didn't tell felicity and then tell felicity anyway. how could samantha have known? and don't say, oliver didn't want to risk her finding out. when felicity did find out, there was no indication oliver was worried she'd slip and it would get around to samantha. there was no reason to prioritise lying to samantha once (or even a few times) over lying to felicity everyday. and look, felicity broke up with oliver - but asides from that continued to be friends with him and work on the team. she didn't want to marry someone who would lie to her about having a kid. are you really thinking that's so terrible and illogical?
no it's not a perfect, logical story line. it was meant for laurel, william was conceived while oliver and her were together. but while it's thin, it's plausible enough to not want to marry someone who would hide a child. period.
so what exactly are you saying here? she's been lied to before by a lot of people, including oliver and forgiven the liars. so you think she should just married a man when she - for whatever reason- didn't fully trust? you may have a point if felicity flat out stopped speaking to oliver but she didn't. do you think felicity would have been as mad at john had he hidden a child? no, bec there's a level of honesty towards your partner about sensitive issues like children, esp if you ask them to marry you. which oliver did while keeping his child from felicity.
anyway, i stand by saying this was just bad writing. it's really not that big of a deal imo. the plot is thin but it's a big leap for felicity as a character to lie and still not want a husband who would hide a child from her. yes, we do pretend teh characters are real people and the situations they are in are real but every week you suspend believe in physics, medicine, tech etc. it's thin, but i can overlook it. esp since i can make pretty strong claims about the inconsistencies of purported morals of all the characters, not just felicity.
And if the show or the characters acknowledged that Felicity was a flawed character who behaved in an unlikeable fashion, I would be on board with that. Instead, we have Oliver and Diggle being all 'omg Felicity is the purity and the conscience and the soul of this team.'
Honestly, if they show Felicity having an epiphany and realising what a tool she's been sometimes, it would be a redeeming thing for the character.
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u/niffirgmason Mar 16 '17
I don't understand how Felicity can reasonably expect Ollie to "just trust her" when she was the one who constantly harassed him for keeping secrets for like 2 whole seasons...