(Vision trying to "wake himself up" being like "Why am I still sitting here talking to you people?" and storming out of the mockumentary was so good)
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Is there any other reality that's infiltrated Pleasantville Is there rape? Murder? Child abuse? Addiction? Poverty? Mental illness? Human trafficking? Slavery? War? Genocide? How much of that "real" shit could you bring into that world and still feel like the good guy
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Wanda creates Westview not just because of First World teen angst or whatever If you think that's the only thing people want to escape from you're the one living in a dream you need to wake up from
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The real world isn't just "gritty" The pain it inflicts isn't just tiny grains of sand that dig into the delicate skin between your toes so the pinpricks of pain make you remember you're alive The real world is filled with FISTS and KNIVES and BULLETS
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That come flying at you HARD, from out of nowhere That don't respect your consent and cut just deep enough to leave aesthetically pleasing scars that make you a more well-rounded character They go through muscle and sinew and bone The blood gushes out too fast to scab over
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The world is full of people with gaping, bloody wounds, left dying by the side of the road, who desperately need surgery and intensive care the world won't pay for
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The best the world can give you is painkillers Carefully crafted cocktails of opioids for those who can afford it NSAIDs chased with cheap booze for those who can't And the docs who hand it out give you a patronizing lecture - "Now don't you become dependent on this stuff"
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The fucking gall it takes for some pundit to look at a bunch of 20-year-old queer kids who are going to be in debt their whole lives, who are inheriting a world riddled with wildfires and school shootings and COVID outbreaks And be like "You all spend too much time on Tiktok"
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The one thing you cannot call Wanda on this show is weak The show dares you to try to say that, to try to apply that facile "You're running away from your problems!" Pleasantville moral to it, then slaps you in the face in this episode with what a horseshit moral that would be
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She TRIED She DID WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO For so long she KEPT TRYING She has been through so much shit - each individual one of her traumas would've been enough to knock someone down permanently, and she kept getting up Like a chump
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And every time she did, instead of being rewarded for her perseverance, the world just kicked her again and laughed Because that's what gritty reality is - it isn't fair, and there's no rules, and the story just keeps going after the episode is supposed to be over
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Like a good Shakespearean tragedy, she's railroaded toward her fall into darkness All her other options get cruelly taken away She tries, she really tries, to find that pathway to recovery and it's blocked, repeatedly, until she has nowhere else to go
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The reveal that Hayward was lying, as guys like him do, about her "descent into madness" She was still trying to be responsible and healthy RIGHT UP TILL THE END All she fucking wanted was a little closure, to mourn him and say goodbye, and she couldn't even have that
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The way she just drives in a haze to Westview because where else can she possibly go now Knowing that going there can't possibly make her feel better but what the fuck else is there to do
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That sick sensation you get when someone "does something crazy" It doesn't make sense but it's the only thing that makes sense She didn't come there intending to cast the Hex, she didn't know it was even possible until she was doing it, but it was the only thing there was to do
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The reveal from her childhood that her stupid childlike escapism is the only thing that's kept her going - because in this superhero universe she's always had just a touch of the gift, the ability to make it come true, within her own little world
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She and Pietro should have died exactly ten seconds after their parents died, that's what was supposed to happen Stark Industries is a quality outfit that doesn't make duds But they lived because of her stupid childish belief that at the end of the episode the story continues
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Lol I guess that's "hopepunk" isn't it In a very real sense - Wanda was never 100% "in character" or "asleep" We saw the "real Wanda" wake up in a big way when Hayward sends the drone
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She knows the real world is out there, with their guns and their bombs and their bombs and their guns She speaks its language well enough And she's just decided she's doing to do what she needs to do to survive it, even if it's completely fucking literally diagnosably insane
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And you don't have to agree with it or support it - indeed if you're anyone other than her you really can't - but you have to *respect* it You can't accuse her of not knowing what she was getting into, not paying the price It's like Neil Gaiman's comic about Emperor Norton
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You keep fucking going on whatever path you can find, even if it's not a path to recovery, even if it's a path into madness At least there's a path
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Lol there's a lot of highfalutin existentialist Camus shit about the fundamental delusion, the noble untruth, that underlies every human life And is also the core thing everyone makes fun of about sitcoms, above everything else silly about them
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In the face of the ruthless business of Hollywood where shows get canceled every day, and in the face of the basic facts of human biology and entropy where death is an inevitability A classic sitcom is written as though it will go on forever There will always be a next episode
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That's what they teach you to believe, even though it's the most fundamental of untruths To keep on going to bed every night believing that after the credits roll you will wake up tomorrow for another adventure
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Not to see your life as a fancy pants classical drama that resolves its primary arc and then wraps up with a neat ending and the curtain falling The kind of ending a classical protagonist like Hamlet famously fantasized about engineering Those are the bad thoughts
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What they need you to believe - what you need to believe, if you want to keep going - is that childlike faith in the ongoing eternal second act of life, the stupid naivety a sitcom reality is based on Every episode is just... an episode Arcs come and they go The show goes on
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Whether it was a great episode or a shitty one, the curtain falls, the credits roll And we wait for the next one to air What hijinks will these crazy kids get up to next? You don't want to miss a moment! We'll be back next week, same time, same channel Don't touch that dial
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(I feel like this most fundamental element - the timeless of a sitcom, the way its reality lives in an endless reassuring loop - is extra powerful because of the irony that WandaVision itself is a limited series hurtling at warp speed through the decades toward its ending)
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(All the fans going "I don't want this to end! I can't believe it's almost over! How did it go by so fast?" are expressing the same emotions as Wanda)
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