Hmmm. I had to reflect for a while on what I think of this episode. 

On the one hand, my expectations were sky-high in anticipation of Oliver and Felicity’s reunion, after 7 episodes and 7 months apart, and there was no way the show would ever be able to live up to those expectations (Unless it gave us 40 solid minutes of Oliver and Felicity of getting reacquainted with each other, obviously). So any disappointment is clearly of my own making, in part at least.

On the other hand, after 7 episodes and 7 months apart, you’d have thought they could dedicate at least one episode – one episode! – to fully unravelling the fallout of Oliver’s imprisonment, and dealing with how it affected both him and his wife, rather than just rushing headlong into the next thing.

I’m fully cognisant that most of my ire is directed towards the fact that this doesn’t get picked back up next week – thanks a lot, crossover literally no one asked for – and then we head off into hiatus, effectively making this episode our mid-season finale. That’s unsatisfying, especially because the Oliver and Felicity storyline seems to hang on a dramatic cliffhanger (ZOMG WILL THEIR MARRIAGE SURVIVE?!?!?) in a way it wouldn’t have done if the next episode actually followed through on this. It’s the television equivalent of clickbait.

Side rant – generally speaking, I don’t have as much hate for the crossovers as a lot of people; I find them fun diversions for the most part. But I do resent the formulaic structure we’ve developed around them – they’re always at mid-season, they mostly ignore the main SLs of the individual shows (last year was probably the exception), they usually involve alternate earths or magic or shapeshifting or body swapping or whatever the heck is going on this year, and given that this year, Arrow gets one less episode overall than usual anyway, I do feel short changed and quite irked by the whole crossover shebang. Imagine if we could have allowed the events of this episode to percolate and develop in the next one, so that the storylines would have some time to breathe.

I think that’s my general disposition regarding the episode – there’s so much happening and not a lot of it is given time to breathe. One of the great things about the prison arc was that there were two arcs running in parallel – Oliver in prison, and Felicity trying to get Oliver out of prison. There were C and D and E storylines too, of course, but those two were the primary thrust that moved the story forward. Each episode advanced those SLs forward in a way that brought progress.

It’s a bit like the weapon the Silencer uses – 701-707 felt a little like when the device is on, and all extraneous sound is extinguished. There is only the fight, the main purpose, and everything else is muted. Episode 8, then, feels a bit like that moment when the Silencer’s device is switched off, and all sound comes rushing back in, and everything is muddled and chaotic and you have no idea how many people have entered the room, limbs flying everywhere.

‘Unmasked’ feels like a transition episode, and for that, I can’t fault it. It gets most people to where they need to be, or at least somewhere along that path. It seems to want to draw a direct line from the events in the present to what happens and is happening in the future. It’s just that, for all that it is a place-setting episode, it loses a bit of the focus and quiet intensity of the episodes that came before it.

And I feel so bad for Felicity, she’s struggling- trying to hold all the pieces together, trying to keep everyone alive, worrying about her husband. And she’s just trying to distract herself by working on her company (and she needs Curtis for this since her wagon has been hooked to his) and hoping to maybe get back her friend and someone to talk/unburden to. What’s disgusting is the way Curtis throws it in her face, takes advantage of her clear vulnerability and rejoices in the things that bring her the most fear (something happening to Oliver). What’s even more disgusting is that to the Arrow Writers this passes as a good friendship because ‘hey felicity is interacting with someone that’s not oliver or William’ and that’s somehow enough.

And you know what, you numbnuts, it’s not enough. Felicity could’ve turned to Quentin, she could’ve called Thea, Lyla maybe, Iris(?), heck even William is more understanding and he’s a freaking preteen boy. She doesn’t need pity friendships where people take advantage of her vulnerability, guilt-trip her and undermine her.

“My grandmother wove in me a tapestry that was impossible to unwind,” Vigo said. “Since then, I’ve dedicated my life to the sea, just as those who have come before me.”

Like the 23 women before her, Vigo has never made a penny from her work. She is bound by a sacred ‘Sea Oath’ that maintains that byssus should never be bought or sold.

Instead, Vigo explained that the only way to receive byssus is as a gift. […]

“Byssus doesn’t belong to me, but to everyone,” Vigo asserted. “Selling it would be like trying to profit from the sun or the tides.”

More recently, a Japanese businessman approached Vigo with an offer to purchase her most famous piece, ‘The Lion of Women’, for €2.5 million. It took Vigo four years to stitch the glimmering 45x45cm design with her fingernails, and she dedicated it to women everywhere.

He’s still a sweetie but with more attitude and will fuck up your shit if he’s grumpy or if you’re wearing shoes with shoelaces. He doesn’t like that. He watches Netflix with me a lot and cries anytime theres explosions or gunshots in a show. He has so many chicken lady friends who he adores and he has fathered 4 chicks. I tried to train him to walk on a leash but he protested by laying down and refusing to move, so we gave that up after a while. He likes to guard me from cars and squirrels, and even plastic bags (which are his worst fear)

During the peak of my Vampire Chronicles love, I – at that time, a very petty fifteen-year-old –  set out to underline every single really queer moment in the whole series. Spite aside, I quickly realized that in a series where the protagonist runs away to Paris with clearly his violinist boyfriend, and convinces his next super angsty obviously boyfriend to MAKE A VAMPIRE CHILD WITH HIM to keep said angsty boyfriend from leaving, this was easier said than done. 

I mean, she’s not fully wrong – Lestat’s not gay, he’s very bisexual. Louis and Nicki are both hella gay, though. 

One of the most important things anyone ever told me, as both a writer and a reader, was when my AP English teacher said to me, “Your thesis statement can be whatever you want it to be. You can tell me that King Lear is gay and in love with Kent, and divvying up his kingdom between his daughters is his way of divesting himself of the role of heterosexual fatherhood he’s been forced into. I don’t care what you say - you just need to show me how the text supports it.”