I think one of the things that annoys me about felicity that not many people talk about (because tbh there is so much to talk about this often goes unsaid), is that not only is she a patchwork of pre-existing characters, but she’s a watered-down patchwork.

You can buy off-brand products that look/taste/smell just as good as the original. You take off the logos and unless you knew what you were looking for you wouldn’t tell the difference. There are some high-quality copies. There is nothing wrong with taking inspiration from pre-established work.

Fictional tropes are recycled constantly, to varying degrees of success. And it’s okay to borrow things from other characters/stories, but you have to do it in moderation and with enough original weight/substance that it is still fresh/new/exciting.

Felicity is not a high quality copy. She’s that pirated DVD with the grainy picture and the muffled audio and the multiple silhouettes getting up to go to the toilet.

Felicity is not interesting to me because:

If i wanted to see a smart, tech savvy, beautiful hacker who gets paralysized, I could see Barbara Gordon in a variety of media, in which Babs is independant and not a love-interest and has her own goals and aspirations, works alongside a group of strong female heroes, and doesn’t get things handed to her, and works to save lives despite her disability, because she’s a hero whether she has the use of her legs or not, her disability will never define her.

Meanwhile Felicity got handed a company by an ex-boyfriend despite having no business experience, currently works on behalf of another ex-boyfriend to help him achieve his own goals, was paralyzed for about a week only to have that magically disappear because of some other guy’s invention, after which her paralysis is never even brought up in a significant manner because she’s more concerned with her recent break-up.

If I wanted to see a quirky, blonde, tech support character who cracks jokes but has a dark ‘goth’ cyber terrorist past , I’d watch Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds. Penelope is funny without being mean, she’s never oversaturated in the narrative but is still pivotal in her role, she worked her way up to where she is, she never jokes at other people’s expense, and she has the bonus of not being ‘conventionally attractive’ but rather a plus-size woman who is not constantly the butt of degrading 'fat’ jokes, which is exceedingly rare in media.

Meanwhile Felicity had a cyber terrorist past that was only revealed out of the blue in S3 because they needed to give some filler to a character who was never built up to be as big as they suddenly decided to make her. Her past antics were directly linked to yet another ex-boyfriend and I can count the times it was brought up on one hand. Her jokes are often condescending and insensitive and she’s extremely oversaturated which makes her exceedingly more annoying. And after she became a potential love interest her entire wardrobe changed to the point where she mostly wears skirts and heels to make her more appealing to the male lead/audience, despite the first season seeing her primarily in trousers.

If I wanted to see a smart, blonde, non-canon love-interest for Green Arrow, I’d watch Chloe Sullivan/Watchtower on Smallvile. Chloe was endearing and popular with fans, she didn’t take over the show and disrupt the canon or replace the leading female because it was a Superman show and it was always supposed to be Clark/Lois as end-game and any other in-show relationships were fair game, and she worked well and was used in considerable moderation throughout the series, and her relevance to the characters remained with the show.

Meanwhile Felicity is a shoehorned copy of this narrative that is a severe disrespect to the established mythos. They gave her the codename Overwatch because these writers wouldn’t know subtlety if it bit them in the ass, her fans are toxic and entitled and have harrassed mutliple comic writers demanding to know why Felicity isn’t in the comics, despite in the same breath saying that they hate comics and the comics don’t matter?? She’s emotionally abusive to Oliver, is selfish and never called out for her unfounded behaviour and is put on a pedestal in any and all situations which makes it hard to root for her when she doesn’t seem to grow or learn from her mistakes because no one seems to want to admit she even made them.

I can’t enjoy felicity’s character because not only is she a blatant and unoriginal patchwork of knock-offs, but she’s a patchwork of different characters minus all the best and progressive parts, who comes with a built-in toxic fanbase who call anyone and everyone 'misogynist’ for so much as breathing one bad word about her, when they clearly don’t know the meaning of the word.