Kal-El814

Yeah I’ve got no beef with that.

I mean if we’re debating wither or not it’s villainous to kill a “fake” dog then we should wonder about the legitimacy of Wanda’s attachment to “fake” Vision and “fake” children. They show Agnes killing her entire coven in flashback, the show’s main action sequence is a fight between Wanda and Agnes, Agnes is the main villain. SWORD guy was a dick to Rambeau, let Wanda try to resurrect Vision as a living weapon, then when that didn’t work, tried to take advantage of the hex and detained the other protagonists of the show so he could do his thing. The show ends with him getting cuffed, he’s the B-villain here. Woo, Rambeau, Darcy... these people are not conflicted in their support for Wanda and Vision. The show is not going to let its heroic supporting cast be unwavering in their support for the show’s villain, that’s just not how the MCU works. Wanda’s not a white knight of any kind, but she’s unquestionably the protagonist and hero of the show. I stand by Woo or someone saying to her, “you just can’t fly away from this,” would have been much more logical than Wanda apologizing just to Rambeau before getting let off the hook by her, but that’s a fair point.

I think the MCU gives a lot of lip service to this, but never anything more than that. Heroes having flaws is what makes them interesting, and that’s where Wanda ended up. First, a subreddit dedicated to people being wrong is not compelling evidence of anything Kidding aside, I’m not saying the MCU doesn’t have sympathetic villains, they’re generally pretty good at that. But the delineation between who the MCU thinks is a hero and who is a villain tends to be clear and I don’t think WandaVision is different in this regard. Loki is a good example of the exception to this rule, but I think that’s largely related to him being around the longest / not dying. I just don’t think the show portrays Wanda as the villain at all. Conflicted hero? Sure. But Agatha and SWORD are the villains of the show. They end up “recast” and arrested / replaced by the FBI. Wanda just pays the hero price that someone like Cap, Spider-Man, Thor, etc. do. They did the right thing even though it cost them something, even if some of them did something selfish to begin with. I think the MCU might be more interesting if they leaned into a potentially villainous Wanda, but that’s just not what happened here. Again the show LITERALLY said it was Agatha All Along, I don’t think they were subtle about this. If this was the intent I think they did a pretty lousy job of showing it. The ending didn’t come off like a walk of shame to me, and even if it did, again, Rambeau’s line certainly tries to justify Wanda’s actions. She’s certainly a fugitive, and I would agree that the global powers that be probably think she’s a villain. But the viewer is supposed to think of her as a flawed protagonist, for sure, I’d agree with that. And yeah, the FBI is clearly out of their wight class if they tried to detain her. But them not trying to or even saying anything to her at all makes it pretty clear that the show’s not trying to portray her as the villain.

I think people saying Wanda is the villain of the show are giving it way too much credit. This just isn’t how the MCU operates. Civil War isn’t about the line between heroes and villains. It’s about how an actual villain (Zemo) can exploit the relationships and different perspectives between heroes. At no point is either team in that movie portrayed as villainous, which is part of why I think it’s one of the weaker movies in the MCU to rewatch. As an excuse to have characters we like punch one another, it’s awesome. Beyond that... eh? Again, Iron Man fights his friends who don’t sign the accords at the same time he’s arming a teenager with a multimillion dollar battle suit and NOT having Pete sign the accords. It’s a mess. But the MCU isn’t going to let “the villain” of WandaVision get put through an emotional meat grinder, tenderly depart from her children and boyfriend, punish Agatha, get a pat on the back from Rambeau on the way out, then fly away. The MCU doesn’t work like that.

Yea, but again, this is the problem. A hero’s dilemma shouldn’t be, “do I set this town of slaves free... or just not do that.” A hero weighing the cost of personal sacrifice for the greater good and personal gain and deciding on the greater good is what makes them a hero. The point is that it costs THEM. So for Rambeau to say she’d bring her mom back with Wanda’s powers after being under Wanda’s spell and knowing what the town went through is just... lousy. If it didn’t cost a whole town of people their autonomy and the cost was personal, yeah, sure, let’s have the discussion. I’m not saying it cost Wanda nothing... but again... town of slaves... This is pretty close to a distinction without a difference to me for Wanda specifically. The whole creation of the hex happened not because she couldn’t control her powers, she used them without even meaning to and then didn’t let herself remember what she did. The grief literally exploded out of her. This is part of the issue. Agatha is clearly the show’s intended villain, you don’t record “Agatha All Along” and have her fate be “permanently cast” as the nosy neighbor without that being the intent. Honestly if Agatha isn’t the big bad of the show, it’s Wanda, and that’s obviously problematic.

I think the motivations of the characters is clear regardless of any outside knowledge, I don’t have a problem with that. It’s the show’s portrayal of Wanda as a tragic protagonist at the end that rubs me the wrong way. Rambeau letting her off the hook with, “they’ll never know what’s you sacrificed,” and telling Wanda that she’d bring her mom back if she had Wanda’s powers is fucking ridiculous. Her saying she’d being her mom back if she had Wanda’s abilities, knowing what Wanda did to get Vision back is bananas. Wanda just coasts away, it’s as dumb as when Professor X asks Magneto to stick around and teach the children a day and a half after he was helping Apocalypse rip the earth to shreds... except even that disaster of a movie knows that Magneto is a villain. Even if Wanda ends up being the villain in Multiverse of Madness (unlikely) it makes no fucking sense for Rambeau’s take post-hex to be, “man YOU’VE gone through a lot,” unless you know Wanda is supposed to be a good guy. Tragic origins are common amongst heroes and villains in comics, the difference is the outcomes and consequences. WandaVision letting Wanda coast is weird. Yeah, I mean this is it. We’re supposed to get psyched about SWORD guy being arrested after he was a bit of a dick while... attempting to free a town of thralls? And we’re also supposed to feel good about Wanda getting to fly away after freeing the town only when it became apparent that her options were to do that or to have her powers stolen and die? I don’t think this show being rushed / the pandemic helped, but I think this problem is more baked into the concept of the show / character than could be fixed by runtime.

That... wasn’t my point.

404’d

Thinking about it more, I feel like the show has the MCU equivalent of a Zack Snyder problem, where the treatment of the in-show characters is entirely dependent upon there being an IRL audience that knows the characters better than they know themselves based on material that’s extraneous to this specific instance of them. This Wanda accidentally roofied a whole town without realizing that’s what she was doing, refused to accept that’s what she was doing until absolutely forced to, attempted to double down at that point, only pivoted to freeing them when her “option” was letting the town go or letting an evil witch steal her powers, and created three people from scratch. This makes Rambeau’s line to Wanda in the finale, “they’ll never know what you sacrificed for them,” completely ludicrous. I don’t mean to downplay Wanda’s genuine affection for the family she created for herself, but gimmie a fucking break, Rambeau, she had a town of emotional support thralls. And again, I know that this is kinda her thing in the comics, but I can’t help but feel it’s a little shitty that a female character’s emotions are just too hot to handle, too cold to hold, so her powers randomly go HAM. The MCU’s pre-Endgame Hulk has better emotional regulation than she does and he’s a frigging rage monster.

Related content.

All these clowns have is obstructionism and callbacks to previous glory.

Aww hell yea. Now resurrect Cape Wind.

A buddy of mine was part of the theater department at his college. One day they had Bill Clinton there for a speaking engagement. My buddy needed to get some of his gear there the same day that the theater was going to be used for the event and ran into Bill Clinton backstage. Nobody stopped him before or after literally bumping into the former POTUS, on his way into or out of the meeting... nothing.

Thanks, I hate it.

Security in most places is generally terrible. The number of loading docks I was able to park an unmarked van in without anyone stopping me within a year of 9/11 constantly blew my mind. Yeah it was in Boston and not NYC but if you’re white, have a hand truck, and look like you know where you’re going, you’re functionally invisible.

My impression from reading a lot of stuff written by trans people is that the “trans panic” scenario where someone gets surprised by genitals that they’re not expecting during a hookup essentially never happens. Don’t mean to suggest that’s what you’re implying, but there seems to be an awful lot of “fear” from some people about something that’s not really an actual concern. I wouldn’t blame any place for taking a hard line stand on this stuff, especially when the foot in the door is the Super Straight stuff which is obviously done in bad faith.

They could have fit in whatever little else they needed by getting rid of a couple of the setups that ended up not going anywhere

This is because the food dries out, not because of preservatives.

What the fuck

I thought the finale was pretty good, as was the show overall. As someone who will be forever content to have the X-Men separate from the MCU, I really liked the Pietro false flag. Buuuut with that said I think the show was hit or miss with those overall. By the time Wanda stopped “broadcasting” I don’t know how much sense the whole “Agatha All Along” bit actually made? I don’t especially care since it and things like the Vision confessional were funny and entertaining, but I wish they had leaned into the WandaVision“gimmick” a bit more. Honestly by the end of the show a lot of the winks were weirdly Deadpool-esque in that they were played almost exclusively for the audience. There’s really no point in the Pietro recast other than to get the Internet buzzing. That obviously worked incredibly well, but it feels a little cheap in hindsight. And I know this is sort of her thing in the comics, but to me it came off just a little weird that the whole premise of the show is that Wanda’s grief is so great and her understanding / grasp of her power is so poor that she just roofies and enslaves a whole town then broadcasts it as a television show without realizing what she’s doing? And then once she acknowledges that’s what she’s doing she’s not able to accept that the people there might be suffering? I know it’s magic and I don’t expect it to “make sense” but here it really feels like they’re not even hiding that everyone can do whatever they need to at whatever moment they need to do it for no other reason than that they need to. Wanda goes from, “I’m not a witch” to casting runes the size of buildings in... minutes? But it’s very well cast, earnestly performed, and very entertaining so I don’t really care about the nits. I think they could have had something REALLY special and instead they just kinda flirted with it and gave us a fun ride, which ain’t bad. And that’s kind of the MCU’s whole brand in general anyway, so whatever

Wade I’m gonna nut

The next time I recommend that we sink Manhattan out at sea, people can remind me this is creeping into Boston, apparently. Is This “Open-Concept Bathroom” in JP a Dream or a Nightmare?

Riley larping Thanos in here, I see.

I categorically refuse to believe any of these clowns actually give a fuck about Dr. Seuss, given his most popular books are about developing empathy at Christmas and not punish fucking the planet in order to make consumer goods.

BotW is a launch title and often runs badly. I love the Switch, too. I have less of a problem with the performance of the system itself insomuch as I do with the fact that Nintendo itself hasn't been great at designing games to spec from jump. Also I hope that a larger Switch means Joycons that don't blow ass? One hopes.