#how did anti wanda fans cope back then

[mellonieee]

How did the OG FOP writers fumble Anti Wanda so badly. I know the antifairies are meant to be the inverse of their counterparts which would make AW the 'Cosmo' of the relationship while AC would be like 'Wanda' but at least AC has more character outside of that. I'm willing to believe that AC is genuinely a genius despite his stupid moments--which would contrast with Cosmo, obviously, but I think that it contrasts with Wanda as well. Wanda's smarter than her husband, but it's not like she's a genius. It's like taking that trait and cranking it to the extreme.

I suppose going with that logic I understand why Anti Wanda's sole defining trait was 'dumb.' But they could've just made her laid-back instead of stupid, that would've made sense.

[silverloreley]

What a delusion...

I was cautiously optimistic about Wandavision before it came out. I thought it could lead me to reconnect a bit with the MCU (I intentionally skipped a lot of movies and disliked every one I saw after AoU, with a small exception for Black Panther and Dr Strange, not to mention I never finished Endgame, so...).

Dear, I was wrong.

I started watching it with some interest after seeing the trailer on tv, I have been a long-time fan of Bewitched and I hoped for something on that line, a lighthearted fantasy Wanda concocted to deal with the loss, only for someone to get in and help her get out of it and cope in a more reasonable way because they needed her or something, or maybe because she was an Avenger who went missing and people wondered what happened to her and if what she was doing could be dangerous (a reasonable belief, I may add, given her precedents...), a thing like that. And it sort of was like that, except it wasn’t?

And, okay, I was biased from my own high expectations, I wished for things that weren’t there and Marvel would have never given me (full and well-thought plot, emotions, exploration of magic in the MCU and so forth), but I didn’t think they could mess up so bad. The finale in particular was a train wreck.

Why introduce new characters (and bring back Darcy) if they are of no consequence in the final showdown? I guess they needed to introduce White Vision (even though I can’t fathom why...) plus make an origin story for the powers of Monica (to whom I had no prior attachment since I didn’t see Captain Marvel but I grew quickly fond of her here), but what else? We didn’t get to see her abilities or her coming to terms with them (which would have been great and possible if she had been introduced to the plot earlier) or anything. Nor it made me hope to see her again because I am back to be uninterested in anything Marvel after this mess. The fact they gave us the twins only to take them away like that and in the after credits make them call for mom made me irrationally angry on top of the rest. I won’t even mention the whole Quicksilver matter because it was plain stupid to cause all that hype for nothing.

I don’t really understand how could they ruin it so badly, especially after how good ep8 had been in comparison to the rest. Meh.

To cite @lucianalight, how can we consider Wanda a hero after that? Even leaving out what she did before (she was pardoned for her AoU actions by joining the Avengers and fixing what she’s done as much as she could and we don’t know how many lives she saved before CW happened, so I give her the benefit of doubt that she redeemed herself a bit there), but now we saw she kept the town trapped even after she realized what she did! Agatha may have wanted to take her powers but she had a point in saying “heroes don’t torture”, and then what did Wanda do afterwards? Condamned Agatha, who could have been a great teacher to her, maybe a good friend in due time, to live a shallow life as a brainwashed dimwit?! WHY? Agatha had a point. Multiple points, if we take the hints the Scarlet Witch would be the one who destroys the Multiverse. In a way, Agatha was trying to prevent that by taking the power she saw, a win-win situation at the expenses of Wanda, I’ll give you that, but ultimately not that villainous.

I guess that what I’m trying to say is: why couldn’t the plot be more coherent with the idea Wanda was a hero AND with the MCU in general?

But, hey, Marvel sucks at anything but special effects and I don’t know why I had hopes for this show. Just like I don’t have any more hopes for the Loki series (which is a pity because I wished so bad for Tom Hiddleston to reprise the role on his own terms with some creativity freedom that could take Loki back to the Shakesperean anti-hero from his early days I love so much, but clearly Marvel doesn’t know what a precious resource they have, blame on them).

(And here I realize I elaborated a rewriting of WandaVision so I’ll put it under a read more because it wasn’t the original point of this post, lol)

Would it have been too hard to make the first episode and half as they were, then introduce Monica as they did but without a whole town hostage and more like, I don’t know, a magic red coocoon the size of the house in the middle of a simple town that alarmed a lot of people? Maybe with people being sucked in for a few hours from time to time and with no memories of it, except for the transmission of the “episodes” on a magically appeared channel in the town’s tv.

And then Monica, who tried to get in and was sent out, would recognize Agatha as someone from “outside” too and try to figure out what was going on. Cue Monica and Agatha both trying to “wake” Wanda each in their own way but Monica, who understands Wanda’s grief a little better than Agatha, would be the one to breach out Wanda’s on a feelings-level while Agatha, being more interested in Wanda’s powers would try to see the full extent of them.

Here I had two ideas: Agatha is a gray-character who just wants to study another witch, maybe to figure her out or to have a student after centuries alone. Or Villain Agatha who wants to unleash chaos magic to the greatest extend possible to get her own gain, maybe to exploit the twins who were spawned from pure magic, or, as it was speculated, she’s allied with Mephisto who wants the kids for his own nefarious scheme.

Either way, Wanda has to face Agatha. First scenario: Agatha realizes Wanda is the Scarlet Witch and offers to teach her a proper way of magic, perhaps to avoid the destruction of the Universe the Darkholme (I hope I got the name right) predicts, with Monica, who is finding her own powers and dealt with her grief along with Wanda, convinces Wanda it’s a good idea. Second case: Agatha kidnaps the boys and sends them to Mephisto, Wanda and Monica fight her but the boys are lost in the Multiverse and Wanda has to teach herself magic to find them again.

About Vision, the fact he was an illusion and Wanda didn’t steal the corpse to revive it was the only good point of the plot, their goodbye was very emotional and I liked it enough to think it could have stayed the same, but the boys were born through Chaos magic so they woulndn’t disappear. In the grey!Agatha scenario, they would stay with Wanda in the cottage while she learns magic (we could have had a cool scene with her playing with the kids while her astral projection studies magic, like in the post-credit scene), only to be kidnapped mysteriously when she turns for a second.

And maybe my take shows I would have liked more friendship between Wanda and Monica, and maybe I think Agnes’ potential and all the implication of her very existence were wasted, maybe I would have given people the cameo we were expecting with Strange showing up at the cottage with a “you need to learn things properly if you want to save your kids and not destroy the multiverse by accident”, and so on.

[recentanimenews]

OPINION: WandaVision, SSSS.Gridman, and the Beautiful Prison of Nostalgia

  Just to warn folks: this article contains spoilers for WandaVision and SSSS.Gridman. 

  In 2021, in the middle of a pandemic and floundering movie theaters, the most discussed show of the year so far is Marvel's WandaVision. Fans and culture writers have been busy diving deep into what the show is about. Is WandaVision a successful portrait of the process of grief? Does it successfully humanize Wanda, a character who’s so far evaded the spotlight given to characters like Iron Man or Captain America? Is “what is grief but love persevering” a good or a bad line? Where was Mephisto in all this? Most difficult of all: in allowing Wanda some relief and kind words after she brainwashes an entire town into doing exactly what she says, does the show let her off the hook? 

  Listening to my friends and coworkers argue over this show over the past few weeks reminded me of one of my favorite anime of the past few years — a series that tackled themes of grief, nostalgia, and whether a monster can be redeemed. A series that predates WandaVision by three years and has a sequel coming out next month. That’s right, I’m talking about SSSS.Gridman!

    Like WandaVision, SSSS.Gridman is a show about a girl (Akane) who escapes to a bubble world when life becomes too much for her to bear. She uses special technology to manipulate people’s awareness, and through the power of a mysterious entity known as Alexis Kerib, summons giant monsters (kaiju) to murder those she doesn’t like. Our heroes, a trio of her classmates who join forces with the space cop Gridman to defeat the kaiju endangering their friends, eventually turn their attention to saving Akane, the “god” of their world, from herself. They do this over the course of 12 episodes and many exciting, well-choreographed battles.

  While Yuta (Gridman’s friend and partner) is technically the protagonist, Akane quickly steals the show as the most developed and layered character in the series. She’s capable of astonishing violence in the pursuit of her own happiness, but just as easily bruised when her plans fail and her creations turn against her. We see the moments when she regrets her actions, but also the moments where she makes terrible decisions despite knowing their costs. Just like Takeshi, the villain of SSSS.Gridman’s live-action predecessor, Akane is defined by weakness as much as strength. Even when her actions put other people at risk, they are driven as much by anxiety and fear as they are by hate.

    Just like with WandaVision, there was plenty of discussion as Gridman aired about whether or not Akane could be redeemed. Like Wanda, Akane has hurt and even killed many people. At times she even attempts to manipulate them. Yet at the end of the series, when she “opens the door” to Yuta and her friends and escapes Alexis Kerib’s influence, I was overjoyed. How could this be?

  Here’s my guess. Like WandaVision, Gridman isn’t just a show that attempts to humanize a villain. It is a show about nostalgia. As each episode of WandaVision is an obsessively detailed homage to American sitcoms, Gridman is a 12-episode love letter to live-action dramas and giant robot shows. Obscure alternate universe Transformers tie-ins, past episodes of Ultraman, Gridman scripts and guidebooks that were never produced — it’s all there, packed in not just by the dedicated staff but presumably through scriptwriter Keichi Hasegawa, himself a legendary Ultraman writer.

    Unlike Takeshi, Akane is a cool, stylish teenage girl. But deep down, she’s as much a geek as Takashi was, fiendishly dedicated to kaiju and robot shows. The kaiju she creates aren’t just a means by which she exerts control over the world, but an expression of her love. When Gridman destroys these kaiju to protect Yuta’s friends, Akane can’t help but take those losses personally. It’s not just the desecration of her favorite hobby. The failure of her creations is a consequence of her own lack of imagination. She can’t imagine any other way to manage her problems than to create a bubble world where everyone loves her.

  The trick of SSSS.Gridman is that while Yuta and his friends are the heroes, Akane is the true audience surrogate. How many of us also feel as though we are ostracized nerds with low self-esteem? How many use our favorite shows or games as an escape? In WandaVision, we see how Wanda watches sitcoms as a child as a way to cope with daily uncertainty. There’s nothing wrong with sitcoms; the creators of WandaVision clearly love them, having built such an elaborate homage to them. But if you spend the time watching sitcoms that you could be using to sleep or to eat (or, say, turning a town of people into a sitcom to avoid dealing with the death of your lover) then something will inevitably give.

  In Episode 9 of Gridman, Akane traps Yuta and his friends within their dreams in a last-ditch effort to turn them to her side. Each rejects her, choosing their responsibility to their friends rather than their god. At the end of the episode, we see that Akane, herself, is trapped in a dream. Despite holding unlimited power, all she can do is retreat further and further into a shell that she has built out of her own self-loathing. It is a shell that not even a superhero like Gridman can break. In the end, at the very last moment and with the help of her friends, Akane breaks it on her own.

    You could point at other similarities between WandaVision and what SSSS.Gridman did back in 2018, if you really wanted to. For instance, the way that both series (through Vision and Anti) approach the question of personhood and what it means to be a “monster” or a “robot.” You could parallel the efforts of Yuta, Rikka, and their friends to pull Akane out of her hole with the way Monica Rambeau becomes an empowered hero surrogate in WandaVision. If I would point at one way in which Gridman differs from WandaVision, it is how Gridman’s embrace of live-action superhero shows and giant robots better lends itself to a finale where human evil is punched into submission. By comparison, by the time Wanda starts throwing energy balls around in WandaVision, it jars with the sitcom homage and character study of earlier episodes.

  All things said, at the end of the day I prefer Ultraman and giant robots punching each other to Cheers and Marvel films. That’s not to say the latter is worse; it’s more a matter of personal taste. Either way, I’m glad that art continues to be made that grapples with the messy contradictions of human behavior. Though I’ll suggest: if you’re looking for genuinely challenging, ahead-of-its-time source material for a Marvel adaptation, X-Statix is right there!

  Did you watch WandaVision as it aired? Are you looking forward to SSSS DYNAZENON? Will we ever see an animated adaptation of Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye? Let us know in the comments!

    Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he is not loudly shouting the praises of John Allison and Max Sarin's Giant Days, he sporadically contributes with a loose coalition of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at: @wendeego

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a feature, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: Adam Wescott

[ssironstrange]

endgame rant

SPOILERS AHEAD PLEASE AVOID IF YOU HAVENT SEEN IT YET

yeah i know i said i wouldn’t post spoiler shit but listen i gotta get this off my chest ok

i have some REAL BIG FUCKING ISSUES with the way the russos handled a lot of plotlines. don’t get me wrong, this movie was amazing and epic and fucking award worthy, but as a fan i’ve taken offense to a Lot of things.

clint

nothing about his ronin story makes a lick of fucking sense in the mcu. his family is dusted so he…… goes on a mass murdering spree??? decides that he should get a haircut and spend the next five years getting an edgy tattoo sleeve??? um. okay then. destroy the past like 10 years of his character having one of the best moral compasses of the entire team. why did he take up using a fucking SWORD in present day? do you know how long it takes to master swordsmanship at the level he was? with at least half of the world’s teachers gone? more than five fucking years thats for damn sure. and between him and natasha dying for the soul stone? it should have been him. i know he had a family and all but listen. nat went through physical and psychological torture. her body was modified against her will. she was brainwashed and used. and finally, FINALLY she gets free of it all, finds a family in the avengers, and continues to try and better herself to make up for things that weren’t even her fault to begin with. and clint? what did he suffer? oh thats right. nothing. he’s just damn good at his job and loves his family. the fact he has a family sucks for sacrifice, but they are well taken care of and every single one of his kids are old enough to understand AND nat would have stepped in immediately as a parental figure to help laura. they fucking fridged nat for clint and i will never forgive that.

thor

here we go. thor’s character legit made me uncomfortable. they went way overboard with the new thor personality. but… fatshaming and making fun of his very real depression and ptsd?? wtf russos. like, haha he let himself go so funny but its NOT. he wasn’t even like…. fat, for one. just a normal dadbod and beer belly. which by the way seems a lot more realistic according to most norse myths of the gods. they were warriors, yeah, but they drank a fucking lot and feasted a fucking lot so. anyway. thor has lost his entire family. not only that but he watched them all die. he saw his mother bleed out. he watched his father disperse into nothingness. he watched the brother he has loved and cherished no matter the amount of times of betrayal and misdeeds get his neck snapped and his lifeless body thrown to the ground. and then the sister he never knew he had killing almost all of your people and then being forced to find a way to kill her. can you imagine trying to cope with that??? and when you put his age into our perspective, he’s only in his 20s. so imagine seeing your whole family die before you’re even 25, then taking on the responsibility of ruling your people. said surviving people are then massacred in front of you with only a few dozen escaping. THEN living with the guilt of blowing your chance to kill the man responsible for that and unable to stop him from decimating half the universe. (and even when he does get revenge on him, it’s too late) tell me you wouldn’t have an atomic level meltdown. thor is suffering so much and all they can do is make fun of him for it and shame him for it. he deserved better.

steve

yall know i don’t like steve. i don’t hate him and i’m not anti-steve, i’ve just never enjoyed his rather inconsistent character and self-righteousness. it felt like we were FINALLY getting a steve i could get behind in this. a steve that swears like he should. a steve who still puts on a brave face for the public but behind closed doors with friends he’s miserable and broken like the rest of them and SHOWS it to them. a steve who realizes he is stuck in the past and just can’t seem to move forward. a steve who i can finally see the culmination of EVERYTHING he’s been through resting on his shoulders and eating him alive inside. finally we were getting a properly layered steve rogers. and then tony came back and that all fell apart. we didn’t get the apology steve owed him (and tbh tony owed him one too but we’ll get to that), we didn’t get a remorseful steve. he didn’t even address the goddamn issue. he went straight back to his bullshit. admittedly he was a better listener this time around and a far better team player overall. it wasn’t a total loss. but. BUT. his ending? no. hell fucking no. i’m happy he and peggy got their life, but it still shouldn’t have happened. how fucking selfish. how fucking backwards of his character. i get he didn’t have a choice in being brought back into the present and that is unfair and sucks for him, but what fucking right did he have to mess with a timeline like that? what right did he have to just decide without telling anyone he was done and giving up? why did he get the fucking happy ending???? steve rogers who looked tony in the eyes and said he wasn’t the kind of man to lay on the wire for someone copped out. steve rogers who knows of all the social progress we’ve made decides to go back to a time where he would be forced to accept segregation and extreme gender inequality and rampant, blatant, gross racism of all sorts oh and more war and alkjdalksdhkas NO plus they broke their own time travel rules so like whatever i guess right?? it’s okay if steeb gets his stupid happy ending right? god is it SO MUCH TO ASK FOR JUST ONCE TO HAVE A GOOD CHARACTERIZATION OFCAP???? it’s not your fault cevans honey you’re doing amazing your directors just have no fucking idea 

tony

frankly this has been amongst rdj’s best performances of tony. i’m still partial to a lot of his acting in the iron man movies BUT this was FANTASTIC. him finally being allowed to absolutely go off on steve was fucking delicious and everything i was waiting for. let it all out tony baby. buuuuut we should have also had something more. i know my fellow tony stans typically don’t believe it but tony was wrong in civil war too. surprise they both fucking were. ANYWAY. i was waiting for an honest apology between them both. after everything they just went through, NONE of the petty bullshit they went through before matters at all. and yet the closest thing we get is tony just being like “turns out i don’t like to hold grudges” or what the fuck ever. why is it so hard just to make one of them say i’m sorry, the other say i’m sorry, admit it was a bunch of BULLSHIT hug it out and then go forward???? ugh. their choice to make tony suddenly care about his dad and be happy to see him???? disgusting. they made it canon that howard was an abuser, neglectful, cold, and hateful. it’s been a BIG DEAL how tony has struggled with the relationship to his dad because of how shitty the man was to him. and then they do tHAT? fuuuuCK that!!!! i’m not saying tony isn’t allowed to forgive howard. thats fine and expected tbh. but they pushed it way too far. the tony stark we’ve known for the last decade would never get all giddy and happy to see him and hug him and fucking thank him??? what the fuckk?? god that was gross. you know what we should have gotten? what tony deserved more than howard fucking stark? MARIA STARK!! and then, of course, my main issue. they fucking killed him. which only tells us, the audience and fans that no matter what you suffer and sacrifice that your only way to redemption is death. jesus fucking christ i am SO angry over this. they killed the two who suffered the fucking most. the two who every single goddamn day worked on being a better person. nat and tony both deserved so much better than waht they got. how the fuck did it make sense to kill tony who now has a fucking CHILD, who still has a future, who FINALLY FOR ONCE IN HIS FUCKING LIFE FOUND A SHRED OF PEACE????? and then let steve just go selfishly galavant through time as he pleases to have the cute happy ending? FUCK that ending. fuck it right up the ass with a huge unlubed cock. steve should have been the one to use the gauntlet. period. he should have been the one to die like that. i would have still fucking cried but you know what?? that would be the most cap thing ever. i wanted a mirror of pre-serum steve jumping on that grenade, but this time grabbing the gauntlet and not hesitating for a split second to snap. but no. they killed tony who left behind a wife who DESERVED MORE THAN HAVING THE MAN SHES LOVED AND SUPPORTED AND MARRIED AND HAS A CHILD WITH RIPPED AWAY FROM HER!!! tony who left behind a daughter too young to really comprehend yet why her daddy isn’t going to be coming back. fuck you russos. the injustice of it is astounding. i’m never going to get over it. you know how they could have killed tony? if they really felt like they needed to? have him grow old and die naturally of old age with pepper in their cute little lakeside house after watching morgan grow into such a strong and brilliant person. but oh. they gave that to steve. right.

stephen

i’ll never complain about having more stephen content but uhhhh i’m gonna complain that we didn’t get more than what we got cause after sitting in the soulworld for five fucking years you canNOT tell me he didn’t get even stronger with time to practice and meditate and work through every iota of information of mystical shit in his head. and yet they sidelined him??? after we’ve SEEN what he’s capable of in IW? just gonna put him on flood control???? something that any of those goddamn sorcerers could have done while he helps wipe the floor with thanos or any of the thousands of enemies? fuuuuuuuuuck that. can you fucking imagine how quickly thanos would have been taken out if it were wanda, carol, and stephen all three against him? jesus. he’s literally amongst the most powerful people but nah, just have him stand over there.

the gay russo

FUCK you for that. i am LIVID about it. yall can’t fucking make valkyrie bi???? or carol????? yall can’t GET AN ACTUAL GAY ACTOR? “ We felt it was important that one of us play him, to ensure the integrity and show it is so important to the filmmakers that one of us is representing that. “ WHAT????????? are you fucking telling me a WOC WHO IS OUT AS BISEXUAL AND WANTS HER CHARACTER TO BE BISEXUAL COULDNT ENSURE THE INTEGRITY OF AN LGBT CHARACTER???????????????? “ It is a perfect time, because one of the things that is compelling about the Marvel Universe moving forward is its focus on diversity.”  SEE PREVIOUS COMMENT????? oh my god fuck them forever.

lets make rules for our time travel then break them immediately

idek whats going on in the timeline anymore. they utterly fucked up and BROKE the timeline of 2012 avengers after letting loki get away with the tesseract. which should have cascaded into their future but, well, it didn’t. so i GUESS now we’re just pretending that made a new timeline which makes no goddamn sense but whatever i guess. steve going back to completely fuck with his timeline, or a timeline at least, and having no consequences in the future besides being old. okay. sure??? we can do all that but we can’t fucking get natasha back. right. cool. okay.

anyway i’m sure theres more bugging me but these are the things bothering me most.

and frankly i don’t care if anyone disagrees i’m not arguing or debating any of this.