#i know i oversimplified and omitted a lot of stuff

[takingontheworldtogether]

my friends who don't know shit about taylor swift requested a pre-album explainer of wtf is going on so i wrote them a little newsletter... if you want something to send to your non-swiftie friends it's beneath the cut

Good morning team,

Why do we need a Swiftie newsletter?

I mean, no one really needs this. But she’s dropping a new album (“The Tortured Poets Department” or TTPD for short) in three days and I’m here to provide you with the information you need before the album comes out. I’ll be back with a post-album review letting you know 1) what juicy gossip was revealed on the album, 2) what tracks you should listen to, and 3) a few things you can say to your Swiftie friends to sound cultured.

What’s this album about?

Okay, I know this is ancient history, but cast your mind back to 2016. Kanye and Taylor Swift are beefing, and Kim Kardashian posts a clip of a phone call that makes Taylor look like a liar. Taylor gets canceled on social media and disappears for a year. 

While all this is going on, she meets her boyfriend, the British actor Joe Alwyn. I have no clue what movies he was in at the time, but since then he was in The Favorite and Harriet, and also Conversations with Friends (I think, I haven’t seen it because Normal People put me off Sally Rooney). Here’s a quick timeline:

Late 2017: Taylor comes back with “Look What You Made Me Do” and reputation. People think reputation is a bad bitch album, but it’s actually an album about finding love in a time of despair.

2019: She drops Lover, which is about many things but primarily about how she loves him and wants to spend the rest of her life with him. 

2020: Pandemic. Taylor writes two quarantine albums, folklore and evermore. These are primarily fictional, but there are a few love songs about him. He co-writes some of these songs pseudonymously.

2022: Midnights. This album becomes wildly successful. It occupies all of the top ten slots on the billboard hot 100 in the week it comes out. It breaks a bunch of sales records.

2023: The Eras Tour starts! Two weeks in, they announce the break up. Taylor briefly dates Matty Healy of the 1975, who is by all accounts a total asshole. This appears to have been a shitty rebound. A bit later, she starts dating the football player Travis Kelce and everyone loses their minds about it. 

It looks like this album is going to be about the end of a relationship of six years and possibly rebounding/moving on. 

Okay, but like… why did they break up?

I mean, I don’t know any of these people, so all I can offer you are guesses based on song lyrics:

1 - He was really big into his privacy, which is kind of difficult if you’re dating Taylor Swift. 

2 - A lot of songs on Lover are about wanting to get married. There’s a song on Midnights that implies that she wanted to get married and he refused. Yikes. 

What’s the promo situation for this album?

The most notable thing to me (and what is this if not me rambling about my opinions) are some playlists curated by Taylor on Apple Music. Each playlist focuses on one of the five stages of grief in mourning a relationship, and they contain songs from her past albums. There are copycat playlists on Spotify, if you’re interested. My favorite is “am I allowed to cry?” which is the playlist for the bargaining stage. 

There’s also a wall in Chicago with a QR code that leads to a video of the words “Error 321 13” and a hidden message in her song lyrics that spells out “Hereby Conduct This,” which is presumably a message that will be finished by the time the album comes out. 

What do we already know about the album?

16 tracks with 4 bonus tracks. There’s a song with Post Malone (yes, really) and a song with Florence + The Machine. I agree, this is not an intuitive combination, but I’m excited. 

Two of the songs are over five minutes long. Two songs are entirely self-written, five are written with Aaron Dessner (from the National), and eight are written with Jack Antonoff (the producer who works with all the pop girlies). Her collaborations with Aaron Dessner are some of my favorite songs of hers, so this is good news to me. 

That’s my preamble to the Tortured Poets Department!

I hope this was informative, but I barely scratched the surface. You have no idea how deep this goes. Also, I need you all to know that I sat down and wrote this in one sitting without Googling anything, which probably means I know too much about this subject. 

In the meantime, I’ve been listening to “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter which is a very stupid song that is fun to listen to. I’ve also been listening to girl in red’s new album, I’m Doing It Again Baby! which is aggressively mid. If you want to listen to a song on it, I recommend “Pick Me.” 

See you in three days!

[theoxenfree]

I think one of the scariest parts of writing for me is the possibility of coming across as unintelligent. and what I mean by that is that I research a lot of complex topics for my work, typically to use for politically powerful/scientist/academic characters who'd be more inclined to know that sort of shit

I am very much a "you've gotta dumb this down for me but idek wtf this means" person, sometimes to the point of extreme simplification. so, sometimes it's a nightmare for me to take oversimplified topics like that, throw them into the mental conversion machine, and shit that stuff back out as uhhhhhhhhhh smart or smth

and I feel like omitting that sort of stuff in writing is avoidant and a cop out to not do something difficult. like, I get not wanting to look like a dumbass if you get it wrong but ngl, as a healthcare professional, I see some of the shit professional authors publish and I'm like 💀💀💀💀 "you didn't really try, did you????"

so, I guess it really isn't that big of a deal esp since I ain't getting paid to do this, y'know?

[onecornerface]

Some criticisms of Washington Post's terrible article about Portugal's drug decriminalization

About a month ago, the Washington Post ran a terrible article about Portugal’s drug decriminalization. There are numerous bizarre and unreasonable aspects to the article. I can only make a first-pass overview of the problems here

To be clear, I think many pro-decrim people oversimplify the situation of Portugal, and overstate its importance to the case for decrim. Moreover, there is a lot I simply don’t know about Portugal, especially regarding developments in recent years. So I can’t currently insist, with much confidence, that the article is factually incorrect about many of its particular claims. Nor can I confidently give my own well-grounded overview of what exactly is going on in Portugal or why. Also, I don’t know the authors’ policy views or intentions. Anthony Faiola at least does not seem to have a track record on WP of conservative fearmongering, but that’s what this specific article ultimately is.

Here's what I can say confidently right now. From start to finish, the article has a certain strong pattern—in what topics it mentions vs. omits, what questions it asks vs. erases, what statistics it provides vs. omits, whose concerns it emphasizes vs. marginalizes/ignores, what proposals it spends more time discussing vs. less time, what experts it cites at length vs. briefly or not at all, etc.

Regardless of intent, and despite a few counterinstances to this trend, the article overwhelmingly functions as propaganda which will predictably encourage its readers to think irrationally, to support vicious agendas, and to make the world even worse for people who are already among the worst-off.

From start to finish, the article continually insinuates that Portugal’s police should be allowed to drastically increase how many drug users they can arrest. The details are mostly left unspecified, and the rationale is mostly left unspecified. But basically the idea seems to be (1) the police should be able to arrest drug users on a wider variety of *grounds* (mainly but not limited to public drug use/possession), and (2) after arresting them, the police should be able to coerce these drug users in more ways or to a greater degree.

In any case, the end result is supposed to be some serious reduction in prevalence of various actual or putative bad stuff—e.g. addiction, public drug use, drug-associated crime, homelessness, and/or suchlike. Supposedly, all or many of these problems have increased in recent years. And supposedly, the only solution requires that police be enabled to drastically increase their coercive powers—presumably as a route to force drug addicts into addiction treatment. I’ll call this, roughly, the pro-crackdown thesis.

The authors don’t directly argue for the pro-crackdown thesis. But the overall pattern of the article is clearly to promote the pro-crackdown thesis regarding Portugal—and I think, by further implication, to suggest something in the ballpark of the pro-crackdown thesis for other reform-leaning countries such as the USA. The article should be read in context of the broader conservative “tough on crime” backlash which has been occurring in the USA & Canada for the last couple of years.

To a first approximation, the article alleges that Portugal’s drug problem (or drug-related problems) has gotten worse in recent years. This sounds to me like it is probably basically true and largely agreed-on, so I don’t challenge it, although I note that the article fails to much explain or clarify it. The article mostly relies on anecdotes, and occasionally on a smattering of no-context statistics, which don’t allow much of a sense of what exactly has gotten worse, or over what timeframe—let alone why. Still, actual experts do seem to agree that things have gotten worse overall.

The article insinuates that the police need to arrest lots of drug users in order to seriously mitigate the problem. But the article provides extremely little evidence that this is true. Most of the article’s evidence is too vague and decontextualized for us to interpret its relevance to the pro-crackdown thesis.

Throughout much of the article, the pro-crackdown thesis sounds vaguely like repealing decriminalization, though occasionally it is (very slightly) clarified that it isn't supposed to repeal decriminalization outright but only implement some more limited re-criminalization. Again the details are left remarkably vague. I’m not certain without further research, but it sounds to me like fake moderation that provides cover for extreme changes. The article is obviously pushing for the arrests of quite a lot of people who aren’t currently being arrested.

Most shockingly, the article occasionally mentions evidence which (if true) challenges or even refutes its own pro-crackdown thesis—yet the article mostly ignores the relevance of all this.

On a preliminary note, the article never specifies whether police enforcement powers have actually changed in recent years, in terms of what the police are and aren't allowed to do. Has there been any contraction in the grounds on which police can make arrests? Has there been any reduction in what police can do to coerce those whom they’ve arrested? I don’t think the article indicates any such thing. If the police’s powers stayed the same, but the drug problems got worse, then it would be at least a little surprising if the solution is to change the police’s powers. Of course, decriminalization itself reduced the police’s powers—but decriminalization occurred some 20 years ago, whereas things only started getting worse in the last several years or so. So decriminalization in itself can’t be the cause. So then, what was the cause?

More significantly, the article occasionally mentions that a decade or so ago, Portugal suffered an economic crisis and then drastically cut addiction treatment funding. Near the end of the article, this is briefly discussed in a few paragraphs—but then the article continues and concludes as if this discussion never happened.

So, if and insofar as drug problems got worse in the last several years, the article presents no evidence whatsoever that decriminalization or enforcement changes had anything to do with it. But rather, the article actually presents an obviously salient and severe set of events (economic crisis + funding cuts) that could easily account for the increase in drug problems—seemingly meeting conditions of (1) plausible causal mechanisms & (2) relevant timeframe.

This is not mentioned until late in the article, and the article concludes by ignoring it. The large bulk of the article instead argues for (or insinuates, implicitly arguing for) the pro-crackdown thesis.

If the pro-crackdown thesis is true, how would it work? How would arresting lots of drug users solve the problem? Mostly the article avoids any exploration of the mechanisms that would need to be involved. But insofar as the article *does* suggest a mechanism, it is that the police need to arrest drug users specifically in order to force them into addiction treatment.

The argument presupposes that addiction treatment is crucial for solving the drug problem, and that Portugal needs to get lots more drug users to attend treatment, and that the best way to increase attendance is by empowering the police to arrest lots more of them, on a wider variety of grounds, and coerce them more severely.

Now, there are a lot of unspoken empirical premises that need to be true in order for this argument to have any chance of succeeding. Many such empirical premises are already false or dubious, which I will ignore. But notice that the argument requires, at minimum, that the addiction treatment system be capable of taking in many, many new patients within a short timeframe—i.e. the many addicted drug users whom the police should be newly allowed to arrest & coerce.

So here’s where the argument gets even worse and dumber. Very briefly, early on, the article seemingly mentions that Portugal’s addiction treatment system is basically at capacity, cannot take on new patients readily, and has extremely long wait-lists.

Here’s the key quote: “there are year-long waits for state-funded rehabilitation treatment even as the number of people seeking help has fallen dramatically.” There are tons of variables left unspecified, but the picture given here (and indirectly supported further on, in the section on funding cuts) seems to be a serious problem in treatment capacity. Another quote: “The number of users being funneled into drug treatment in Portugal, for instance, has sharply fallen, going from a peak of 1,150 in 2015 to 352 in 2021, the most recent year available.” Why did this happen? Obviously there could be many variables involved, not suggested by the article.

The drastic funding cuts would likely cause a severe reduction in capacity. And the article never mentions any relevant post-decrim changes to drug laws. There’s no indication that the police used to be allowed to force many people into treatment and no longer are. So, for all the article says, this sounds mostly due to funding cuts. Yet the article barely suggests increasing funding, and rather spends most of its time supporting a drastic increase in police powers.

But the article’s own arguments suggest there needs to be a drastic increase in addiction treatment funding FIRST. Otherwise, what are the police supposed to do with all the drug addicts they’re expected to arrest? They CANNOT force them into treatment, because there is NO CAPACITY for so many new patients.

For the moment, let’s ignore the facts that (1) many scholars have cast doubt on the benefits of forced treatment, (2) many scholars argue that forced treatment causes many direct & indirect harms (which may compete with or outweigh the benefits), and (3) many scholars argue that forced treatment would be unethical or ethically dubious even if it worked and did not cause other harms. (These facts are easy to forget, because the article never mentions or remotely alludes to any of them, other than selectively quoting some vague and easy-to-dismiss appeal to rights.)

Even setting all this aside, the simple fact—acknowledged or strongly implied by the article itself—is that Portugal’s addiction treatment system cannot presently take on many new patients. So, by the article’s own lights, arresting lots of drug users to force them into treatment is *impossible*. Or at least it is impossible unless there were a drastic expansion in addiction treatment capacity first—which the article barely discusses, and clearly considers much lower priority than empowering the police to crack down on drug users. To the extent that any actual experts on drug policy (such as Alex Stevens) have commented on the article, they seem to agree that Portugal needs to re-invest in treatment and/or social programs, not any kind of re-criminalization.

It is at best an open question whether arresting people would be a good way to improve treatment attendance *after* drastically expanding addiction treatment capacity. Perhaps the expansion of addiction treatment would be enough by itself, or perhaps not. But the article’s own brief discussion of Portugal’s history during ca. 2000-2010 suggests the already-successful solution was expanded addiction treatment *without* police coercion. Now, this may or may not be accurate. And I think it is plausible that all sides are inclined to overstate the importance of addiction treatment. It wouldn’t surprise me if other changes to Portugal’s society, e.g. investment in infrastructure other than addiction treatment (e.g. housing, healthcare, etc.), played a bigger role than the addiction treatment itself. But setting that aside, by the article’s own evidence, everything here tends to logically support the solution of expanding addiction treatment without empowering the police. Yet the article instead insists, illogically, on empowering the police and putting treatment at a distant second-place.

One of many elephants in the room: There are also many possible policy domains OTHER than police OR treatment, which could well have a big impact on drug problems—such as housing, job programs, etc. The article avoids all these topics, of course, despite the obvious opportunity presented by the mention of the economic crisis. And so far I have ignored the matter of homelessness, which I’ll briefly return to further down.

In the meantime, absent such a big expansion of addiction treatment capacity, the suggestion of seriously increasing police powers as a way to increase treatment attendance is OBVIOUSLY INSANE. If the police were to empowered to arrest lots of drug users immediately, without other massive changes first, then it would just lock most of them up without treatment anytime soon.

But I think that’s the real agenda here, regarding the thrust of the article in itself and in the broader ongoing context. The real agenda supported by the article, at least functionally, is to support a combination of policies that prioritize getting (some) drug users off the streets and out of sight of wealthy people—that’s basically it. This agenda may need to be artificially propped up by vague appeals to the notion of helping the drug users by forcing them into treatment. But it doesn’t really matter whether this is logistically feasible in terms of scale (it’s not) or typically overall beneficial to the user (it’s not) or ethical (it’s not). The agenda, first and foremost, is to remove some marked underclass of people from the sight and mind of a more wealthy and powerful class of people.

Those are some of the main problems with the article. Even without knowing much about what’s really going on in Portugal in recent years, I can recognize that the article is making an invalid argument for an insane conclusion that obviously clashes with the evidence already provided in the very same article—and in the service of moral priorities that are vicious. But even beyond this, the problems with the article go much, much deeper.

The article is continually unclear about the exact targets of its complaints. Most of the discussion is ostensibly on drug use and/or addiction—but a ton of the article seems really to be complaining about homeless people (possibly even including homeless people who don’t use drugs). I have been simplifying my discussion for the sake of argument as if this were about “drug users” or possibly “addicted drug users,” but a great many aspects of the article simply cannot be interpreted other than being about homeless people.

This raises layer upon layer of issues that I haven't even touched on, all of which make the article worse and worse. Among other things, it raises the question of whether and how much homelessness in Portugal has increased, and why. Although I need to research this a lot more, there are all kinds of debates on the causal relation between homelessness and addiction. The article is clearly premised on the notion that addiction is pretty much the main cause of homelessness—despite the fact that any simple version of this theory cannot be true. The article avoids discussing any other contributors to homelessness.

This in turn is obviously an opportunity to discuss housing policy. I have many serious questions about all this, which I’ll need to research at length. But the article has no interest whatsoever in any of this—except to repeatedly encourage the reader to find homeless people scary and insinuate that the police should be given more power to arrest them en masse.

Yet more problems abound. The article continually casts aspersion against harm reduction services—without acknowledging (or, at most, barely acknowledging) that lots of research and health authorities support these services on the grounds of consistently positive evidence. No evidence or arguments are presented against harm reduction services, nor does the article directly condemn them—but it consistently depicts them negatively, largely using emotional rhetorical techniques.

Notably, the article provides no reason whatsoever to reconsider decriminalization. And, while I’ll need to look into the specifics more to say for sure, I don’t think there is any serious chance that its vaguely described “limited re-criminalization” has any merit.

I have many more complaints besides these, and a lot of possible elaboration on many of these. I have multiple complaints about nearly every paragraph. Nevertheless, by reading it I have gained a better sense of where I need to do more research into Portugal’s policy and society, especially over the last 15 years or so.

[thiscrimsonsoul]

WandaVision Theories...

{out of paprikash} For the purposes of clearing my brain after the new episode, here are my WandaVision theories thus far. These are just my own thoughts, so take them with a grain of salt please. I may not know what the hell I’m talking about at all. XD

Wanda is not the only one in control and may even be in less control than we think she is. In episode 5, said she doesn’t even know how any of this started, but there have been other indications that Wanda is not in full control. She couldn’t dispel the stork in her living room. She doesn’t seem to be able to control when Agnes comes and goes. She would never kill her sons’ dog and I don’t think she would allow that to even happen. In fact, she didn’t know where Sparky came from at all. She was also confused when the husband in the first episode started to choke and when Dottie in the second episode cut her hand on glass. If Wanda was really 100% manipulating reality inside a sealed bubble, then it really would all be under her control. She certainly has the power to do so.

I don’t think Vision was brought back by Wanda, but by whoever set up Westview for her or gave/taught her the abilities to do so. I highly doubt that Wanda would actively choose to violate the Sokovia Accords after being thrown into the Raft after the last time she did so. But even more compelling for this argument is that Vision had a will saying he didn’t want anything done with him after death. I don’t see Wanda going against his wishes. Also, Vision has free will in WestView and Wanda can’t control everything he does like she can with others, despite what she said. And if we are to believe Wanda when she says she doesn’t know how any of this started, then that means she didn’t purposely steal Vision’s body to slap it into Westview to make her perfect world.

What about the video footage of her breaking into the SWORD facility and taking his body, then, you ask? An illusion. That’s not really Wanda in the footage. There are three reasons why this might be. First, there was a lot of interference in the video… static and skipping, etc. Darcy saw similar interference when watching the WandaVision broadcast whenever “bad” scenes were rewound, omitted, or changed. Someone interfered with the footage from the SWORD facility. Darcy & co. came to the conclusion that Wanda was editing the footage… but what if it’s not her that’s doing it? The second reason why I think Wanda wasn’t the one to break into the SWORD facility is the number of people she hurt and plowed through to do it. I don’t buy Wanda being willing to hurt that many people to steal the body of her lover against his will and then enslave a town. None of this is holding water for me just based on Wanda’s personality up until now. And the third reason… is that one of the villains that some of us suspect might be involved, Mephisto, has illusion magic in his repertoire. He could easily have disguised himself as Wanda or changed the footage after the fact.

If Mephisto is behind any or all of what is going on in WandaVision, it’s possible that he retrieved Vision’s body and set up Westview either to trap Wanda or because of an agreement they had. The way Mephisto usually goes about tricking people or getting things from them (such as taking their souls or manipulating them into doing what he wants) is by creating a willing contract with them, just like his namesake Mephistopheles or the Devil, which he is often called. Why would he do this? To gain access to Wanda’s power. If he can get access to her power through an agreement with her or get something else out of her (like two magical twins she just had), then it’s worth his time to create this TV land for her to play around in while he waits to reap the benefits.

When things start to hit the fan, Wanda starts getting upset, and Vision starts questioning what’s going on, Mephisto or whoever is in control has to take action. How would he/they do this? Through the manipulation of memories, which he’s/they’ve done before. Vision says he doesn’t remember who he is or his life before Westview, and Wanda says she doesn’t remember how all this started. Guess what one of Mephisto’s abilities is? Memory manipulation. This then plays right into Pietro Maximoff’s arrival because, as we all know, that’s not Pietro. We can all see that. Darcy even saw that. So why couldn’t Wanda see it too? Memory manipulation. She’s starting to get upset and question things? Well then the entire operation could be in jeopardy. And either Mephisto or whoever is doing this hasn’t gotten what they wanted yet, so it can’t end. So let’s throw in a distraction. And with a little manipulation of Wanda’s memory, she now thinks that’s always been her brother. And that, of course, was a drastic action to keep things from going off the rails, since previous attempts before then had failed... which I’ll get to in a second.

Which brings me to Agnes… who is possibly actually Agatha Harkness, another witch who, in the comics, mentored Wanda but then ended up becoming an adversary. Agnes seems to be someone Wanda can’t control. Her comings and goings seem autonomous, and at first they are always at the right time to avoid things that might disrupt the peace for Wanda. For example, showing up to help her with a last minute dinner in episode 1, giving her advice in episode 2, and in episode 5, showing up to babysit the twins. I think Agnes may be in control of some of what’s going on or, may be working for those who do… an interesting theory when you consider that Agatha worked for/with Mephisto in the comics. She also seems to be aware of the fakeness of Westview and even of the TV show that’s going on, as indicated by the babysitting scene in episode 5 when she asked to try a scene that didn’t go right again and didn’t seem fazed at all by the twins aging several years instantaneously.

Agnes is likely helping Mephisto or whoever else is behind this to get what they want. Those other things I mentioned a second ago that were done to keep the ruse going? All done by Agnes. All these little interventions, these little saves, these little reassurances and advice sessions… they’ve all been Agnes. And up until now, it seemed that the motivation was to keep Wanda happy and inside her illusionary world. However, after she had the twins, things shifted. Now… Agnes seems to be doing things that will cause the twins to accelerate their age. From the babysitting scene where they aged up while Wanda and Vision weren’t looking, to Sparky showing up, which I think was Agnes’ doing, with her bringing in a doghouse for them… and then Wanda and Vision telling them they have to be older to have a puppy, and boom. They age up again to get the puppy. They always age up or want to age up when Agnes is around. I believe Agnes killed Sparky to push them to age up again, but thankfully, Wanda was able to stop it. What is so bad about the twins aging up? Well, if Mephisto is behind all of this, he may be biding his time until the twins are older and have developed powers in their own right, and then he’ll take their power/souls/lives to make himself stronger. It’s kindof what he does. That’s what happened in the comics, in a very oversimplified nutshell. Everything Agnes/Agatha has done so far has been to first keep everything happy and peaceful between Wanda and Vision so that they have babies, and then now to quickly age them up so her boss/partner Mephisto or someone else can reap the benefits of creating this world for Wanda in the first place.

I’ll go ahead and pitch one random off-the-wall thing here that I really don’t think is true, but... what if “Pietro” is Mephisto? We were all trying to guess if EP would play Pietro or Mephisto… what if he’s playing both? XD Another candidate for Mephisto, or more likely I think someone working for/with him, might be SWORD operative and now acting director Tyler Hayward. He’s... been kindof a dick throughout this entire process, and he seems to be really pushing for Wanda to be seen as a terrorist, setting her up to be seen as the villain in all of this. Could it be that he’s trying to keep her under control? Maybe get her to tire herself out so that she’s more easily manipulated? It’s curious that right after they provoke Wanda into coming outside Westview and reinforcing the perimeter to keep people from messing with stuff, that’s when Pietro shows up. Maybe... Mephisto needed to wear Wanda down a bit in order for the memory manipulation that would allow him to come in as a recast Pietro Maximoff to go off without a hitch. Maybe... Wanda at full power and with a calm mind was too strong for him to manipulate. So he had to shake her up and tire her out a bit first. Again, I don’t really think this is true, but it is an interesting theory to run with.

Okay, one more thing to cover. Vision’s co-worker said “she’s in my head” and “make her stop,” so it has to be Wanda who’s doing everything… right? No. There’s another “she/her” in Westview who is a spell caster. Agnes/Agatha could be doing it. But Monica she said felt “pain” and “like drowning,” and determined “it was grief,” so it has to be Wanda’s grief at losing Vision, Pietro, etc. … right? Not necessarily. Mephisto may have gained access to Wanda’s memories, mindset, and emotions when a pact was made with her or whenever and in what capacity this whole Westview thing began. Westview and the mind control of everyone inside, whether made or controlled by Mephisto or Agatha… could be derived from Wanda’s power but not coming from her. Some evidence for this if you think about it are those commercials. The first one was for a Stark brand toaster that looked an awful lot like a bomb. The second was for a Strücker watch, with Strücker being the Hydra officer who was in charge of the twins’ experiments in Sokovia. The third was for a “Hydra soak” bath product. And now this last one… Lagos brand paper towels “for when you make a mess and didn’t mean to.” Lagos, Nigeria was, of course, where Wanda made that tragic mistake that killed a lot of innocent people. All the commercials so far have been referencing events and times in Wanda’s life that were painful. Now… think about what commercials are. They’re usually advertisements for products that vendors pay to have aired in the hopes that you’ll buy their products. In other words, the vendors sponsor the show by paying for a part of the airtime. They’re literally saying that the WandaVision television show is being sponsored by Wanda’s pain. Or, maybe more accurately, someone is using Wanda’s pain and the power behind it to create this reality. So when Monica said she felt Wanda’s pain and grief, she wasn’t wrong, but it’s still not Wanda doing it.

And that’s all I’ve got right now. Again, these are just my theories and ramblings. For all I know, not a single world of this is going to be true at all, haha. But it’s fun to speculate.

Discuss?