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guacam011y · 3 years

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***SPOILERS FOR WANDAVISION EPISODE 6***

So I’m still processing everything but holy shite that ep was wild...

FIRST THINGS FIRST - WANDA, VISION, BILLY AND PIETRO ALL IN COMIC ACCURATE-ISH COSTUMES AND TOMMY IN A MINI QUICKSILVER COSTUME

PIETRO CALLING BILLY AND TOMMY DEMON SPAWN - GOD DAMMIT, IT’S MEPHISTO ISN’T IT? HOUSE OF M HERE WE COME

HERB ASKING WANDA IF SHE WANTED SOMETHING CHANGED

AGNES ASKING VISION ABOUT THE AVENGERS AND STUFF AND AT FIRST SHE SEEMED GENUINELY FREAKED OUT BUT THEN STARTED LAUGHING MANIACALLY AND I STILL DON’T TRUST HER AND AGNES BEING DRESSED AS A WITCH? AGATHA HARKNESS WAS A WITCH - COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT!

DARCY LOOKING OVER MONICA’S MED SCANS AND TELLING HER HOW THE HEX AFFECTS HER EACH TIME SHE GOES IN - IS SHE DEVELOPING HER POWERS?

PIETRO’S CORPSE - SCARED ME JUST AS MUCH AS VISION’S

MOVIES SHOWING IN THE THEATRE IN THE BACKGROUND - THE INCREDIBLES: A MOVIE BASED AROUND A SUPERHERO FAMILY AND THE PARENT TRAP: A MOVIE ABOUT TWINS WHO MEET AT CAMP AND TRY AND SET THEIR PARENTS UP

DON’T GO PAST ELLIS AVENUE - NOW I DON’T KNOW IF THIS IS A CONNECTION OR JUST A COINCIDENCE BUT ELLIS IS THE LAST NAME OF THE PRESIDENT DURING IRON MAN 3

TOMMY HAVING HIS SPEED POWERS AND BILLY HAVING HIS REALITY WARPING/TELEKINETIC POWERS - WELCOME SPEED AND WICCAN

A CALL BACK TO INFINITY WAR WHEN VISION EXITED THE HEX? SLIGHTLY DUSTING AND HE PROBABLY WON’T SURVIVE BEING OUTSIDE OF THE HEX - HE’LL JUST DIE AGAIN 🥲

I STILL DON’T TRUST HAYWARD - HE’S VERY SUS

DARCY BEING TAKEN INTO THE HEX WITH THE OTHER S.W.O.R.D AGENTS - HOPEFULLY WE CAN SEE THE OUTFITS THAT KAT DENNING’S WAS EXCITED ABOUT

I SWEAR THEY BETTER NOT STRAIGHTWASH BILLY AND TOMMY OR I WILL RIOT 😤

***FURTHER UPDATES***

So sit-com wise, it seems they were referencing Malcolm in the Middle as the twins broke the fourth wall and talked to the audience, like Malcolm did

However, the theme song has told the viewer to stop questioning the reality of Westview - which could be a little reference to Mystery Science Theatre 3000? - When Pietro first shows up in the title sequence, along with his name title card, the lyrics say “Though there may be no way of knowing who’s come to play” - Istg, I do not trust Pietro

Vision says to Wanda that he had to wear his Halloween costume because there were no other clothes in his closet, Wanda is trying to move the plot along and forcing Vision to play along

Evan Peters’ ‘Mom’ tattoo is shown, which is a tattoo he actually has in real life ! But could this stand for ‘Multiverse of Madness’ or some other red herring?

Pietro mentions to Wanda that if he had found ‘Shangri-La’ he wouldn’t want to leave either - Shangri-La is a real place on Earth-616 that was founded by a version of Vision

Tommy refers to Pietro’s speed as ‘kickass’ and then Wanda repeats that, saying ‘kickass’ again - Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Evan Peters (both versions of QuickSilver) were in Kick-Ass together

The ad for this episode was freaky af - the character on the beach who starved and decomposed could be a little nod to Indiana Jones, where a Nazi’s face melts in - and it could also be reference to Wanda being all alone and struggling to process her grief. The shark in the ad could also be Nightmare or Mephisto or just someone more powerful than Wanda offering her a new beginning with Vision or trapped her in some way - and is feeding off her magic? The flavour of the yoghurt is strawberry flavoured and strawberry’s are red on the outside and pink-ish on the inside - much like Wanda’s og costume and her magic being red 👀

Pietro and Wanda talk about their Sokovian accents at a point in the episode and how neither have them anymore. Wanda’s, as we know, has disappeared over the course of the MCU movies and Pietro’s just doesn’t exist - another nice little nod to Peter Maximoff from the fox X-Men films? Also, Pietro states that “I’m just trying to do my part, okay? Come to town unexpectedly, create tension with the brother-in-law, stir up trouble with the Rugrats (a 90’s cartoon 👀) and ultimately give you grief.” - in reference to the grief part, could Pietro be killed off again? Stir up trouble with the rugrats, being possible shards of the demon Mephisto’s soul, could this be Mephisto trying to influence them on a deeper level? It’s also many many common sitcom clichès

Pietro talks about how “I got shot like a chump on the street for no reason at all” - nice little nod to how Pietro was killed off unnecessarily and how we as a fandom still talk about how regular bullets shouldn’t have killed him

Herb is dressed as Frankenstein’s monster - Dr. Frankenstein created his monster and soon lost control over him, and he was created using electricity or lightning - much like Vision was created and brought to life by Thor using Mjolnïr to bring lightning down to his incubator thingy majig. Could this also be a reference to either Wanda slowly losing control over Westview or someone else controlling Wanda/controlling the citizens of Westview - we saw in episode 3 that Agnes told Herb to be quiet as it seemed he was about to spill the beans 👀

Vision goes towards Ellis avenue and is at a ‘crossroads’ of sorts - in folklore, crossroads are often used to speak to or summon the devil and are also used when an important character is making a decision that could change everything. He spots some citizens repeating certain actions and/or just standing completely still, could these be npc’s (non playable characters)? And now that the barrier of the Hex has spread, will those citizens now start to move? 👀 Also I know that all stop signs look like it, but the stop sign is also a red hexagon 🛑

Darcy scrolls through Hayward’s computer files and goes past a file called “Project C4-113” - it could reference Avengers Issue #113 in which Wanda and Vision both appear on the cover and she says she’s going to make the world pay for Vision’s death. There’s also another file called “Project M5-247” which could be a nod to Avengers Issue #247, which shows the origin of the Eternals and in the same vein, Scarlet Witch and Vision trying to help Captain Marvel. And when Darcy emails Hayward’s cataract plans, you can see the names of “James Alexander and James Gadd” - James Alexander is a visual effects producer on Wandavision and James Gadd works on post production at Marvel

Also: Agnes pulls as Mrs Hart and repeats the same phrase over and over again

After Wanda blasts Pietro, you can see on a fake grave stone the name of “Janell Sammelman”, Janell is a first assistant director on Wandavision

When Wanda moves Westview to save Vision, she turns S.W.O.R.D and it’s agents into clowns + a circus - I just love that the agents turned into clowns 😂 but there is a nice little plot line in the comics where Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Hawkeye join the circus - and this COULD be stretch, but earlier in the episode there is the number #22 which could be Avengers Issue #22, which is the Issue that they join the circus

As soon as Vision was brought back into Westview, he was healed - which means if he was to exit again, he probably wouldn’t survive 😭

The episode title is ‘All-New Halloween Spooktackular!” - which “All-New” is a designation that is often used on covers for comic books. And the first issue of the second The Vision and the Scarlet Witch series takes place on Halloween night - but the events in this comics didn’t influence this episode’s plot

Pietro points out that he has the “XY chromosome” - X for X-Men? Plus there’s the X gene 😂

He mentions “Uncle Peter to the rescue” - Peter is the name of Quicksilver from the Fox X-Men Franchise

Pietro and Tommy quote the movie Top Gun (1986) by saying “I fell the need, the need for speed”

Wanda almost seems hesitant to trust this version of Pietro (rightfully so, in my opinion) and is wary of him being around Tommy and Billy

Pietro says some very Mephisto/Nightmare-like things this episode - “Unleash hell, demon spawn!”, “The kids need a father figure”, “Damnit, if Westview isn’t charming as Hell...” - And if Pietro isn’t Mephisto/Nightmare, it HAS to be Agnes or her other half Ralph and Pietro is probably Ralph tbh...or could Pietro just be a scapegoat and Hayward is Ralph? 👀

The theatre in town, which is playing the Incredibles and The Parent Trap, is called the Coronet. There’s a classic poem called “The Coronet” written by Andrew MARVELL (Marvell, is also the true name of the first incarnation of Captain Marvel in the comics) and is about a guy who knows that the sins of mankind led to the death of Christ. He attempts to create a new crown for Christ’s head in an attempt to atone, but finds that there is sin in the crown as well, as the devil is within the crown and therefore he may achieve glory and success with his new creation 👀

Hayward’s confidential project “Cataract” included experimenting on Vision’s body, as was revealed by Darcy (my wife 💙 and Monica is also my wife 💚 and so is Wanda 💛, I just love women, you know? 😂). A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens of the eye that leads to a decrease in vision - is Hayward trying to weaponise Vision? Or maybe even trying to bring Ultron back? Or do what Tony wanted to do in the first place, and make a suit of armour that’s around the world? Either way, it’s for nefarious purposes

Who is Monica’s guy? Jimmy and Monica are off to meet him - could it be Reed Richards (Mr Fantastic)? Or could it be Victor Von Doom (Dr Doom)? Could it be Hank McCoy (Beast)? Or even Adam Brashear (Blue Marvel)? Or if it is a woman, could it be the Skrull daughter of Talos that Monica befriended at the end of Captain Marvel? Could it be Abigail Brand (A major character in recent S.W.O.R.D comics and an Alpha Flight Member)? Or even Toni Ho (Iron Patriot, and could she be introduced to help lay the ground work for my other queen, Riri Williams/Iron Heart?)? Or could it even be Sue Storm (Invisible Woman)?

In the background of the episode we see a number of children and adults dressed up as many different characters, which includes: Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat, Jason Voorhees, with a sweater striped like Freddy Krueger’s and even a kid that looks dressed in an off-brand Charizard costume 😂 Pokèmon has always been popular, but saw an increase during the 90’s

Pietro and the kids are drinking “Kane Cola” which could be a reference to the 90’s drinks “Jolt Cola” or even “Surge” - it could also, with all the X-Men Easter eggs, be a reference to Garrison Kane, who was a member of Cable’s mercenary team “Six Pack” and is sometimes also known as ‘Weapon X’

The kid that Wanda mentions having a “skin thing” in the orphanage - could that be a reference to her Brotherhood of Evil Mutants co-worker Toad? Or maybe even Mystique? Maybe Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler)?

One of the houses has a sign up that says ‘Macabre Mansion’ - another possible reference to House of M?

During a flashback, it’s shown that the twins are playing Dance Dance Revolution, which came out in 1999. Also this might be a stretch, but the boys have a dog plushie in their room the right - which is coloured red and black - could this be a reference to Dogpool? 😂

I love this show 🤣💙

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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The Legend of the Three Caballeros: Dope-A-Cabana Review (Commissioned by WeirdKev27)

Salduos Amigos! Since i’m covering a full series, i’d like to welcome any newcomers to the first part of the epic final stretch of THE RIDE OF THE THREE CABLLEROS! For those of you just joining us, a few months back WeirdKev27, easily my biggest supporter as the only one who comissions any reviews from me, asked if I could do a big project for him: a comission of EVERY major american apperance of those three happy chappies in matching serapes. Give i’ve ALWAYS loved the boys ever since house of mouse and had been sitting on Legend of the Three Cablleros for far too long, more on that in a minute obviously, I happily agreed. Plus the rather nice influx of cash from the comissions was very welcome. If your intrested in comissioning your own, hit me up via my direct messages. It’s 5 dolalrs an episode, though I do do discounts on orders of 3 or more, and 10 for a movie, with again discounts for orders of more than one. And yes that plug was very shamless, but again I have no other job than this. Back to the point these reviews have taken me on a wonderful journey: I got to rewatch the movie and revel in the fun songs, acid trips and super horny Donald Duck, got to both revisit one of Don Rosa’s best story and read another all time classic from the man I hadn’t before, took a trip back to the house of mouse to hear some great songs and see some great cartoons.. and some not so great ones, took a small detour to Mickey and The Roadster Racers to be baffled and annoyed though I am proud to say it was my first review back after I came down with Cornovirus and lost a week of work time. And finally I covered the town where everyone was nice, and got to see the boys have a joyous reunion with Donald and be lushly animated while.. Dewey jackassed around in a B-Plot and Webby resisted the urge to throat chop him. It’s been a long ride and you can find all of it is so far RIGHT HERE IN THIS CONVIENT LINK ! CLICK IT NOW IF YOUR CURIOUS. Point is while this was well paid for.. it’s easily one of the projects i’ve been most proud of and while i’m sad to see it winding down, i’m proud of what i’ve done so far, and I just wanted to heartily thank Kevin for the ride and for being so generious as to fund the whole damn thing. Your a good dude man.

Which brings us here, to the grand finale. The Legend of the Three Caballeros! As the boys first starring roll as a group since the movie, there was really no other way this retrospective could end, and since I have a terrible problem with procastination and really hated this series version of daisy I just kept pushing back watching the series until now. I’m not proud of it but I am happy to correct it and hope you’ll all come along with me. Before we get started I could not find much background on the show. It was directred by Matt Danner who was the character designer for the utter classic Xiaoilin Showdown and currently works on the Muppet Babies reboot, so i’m happy he’s still getting work. Otherwise I couldn’t find much. The most I could was on tv tropes, claming the series was orignally meant for Netflix.. and while I have no proof and this could easily be conjecture.. i’m inclined to belivie it. The series was apparently done long before the Ducktales reboot, to the point Frank Angrones was only vaguely aware of it and it didn’t even remotely impact the series, with Panchito and Jose only debuting in Season 2 because the original idea for bringing them in was scrapped. So while I don’t have proof.. I’m inclined to belivie it since it makes sense: Disney DID have a healthy relationship with Netflix once, setting up the MCU shows and likely being happy there.. but eventually they wanted their own corner of the sky, and likely didn’t want one of their shows bolted to the network like all their marvel shows were. The problem this created though is Disney was CLEARLY left with a show they no longer had a place for. But even with that the show was still done, they COULD have put it on the Disney Now app or just aired it on the Disney Channel. See if there was any fan intrest in season 2 or throw one into production to at least beef up the episode count. I mean the Cabs have a built in fanbase, kids would likely love it... it’s the logical choice. But this is Disney. They’ve had to be drug kicking and screaming into representation, to the point they had to be fought for the gay romance subplot in owl house to happen, try to hide that the Sparkshort “Out” is about a gay man struggling with coming out despite having you know reams of content on the service with either gay subtext or out and out gay characters, and their attempts at doing representatoin to score points in other little ways.. have been pathetic, easily missable bits in movies that could , and have been, edited out in more homophobic countries. My point is yeah i’m still sore about how they and a LOT of the animation industry have to be dragged into doing the right thing over profit, and they often make very stupid decisions for seemingly no reason. They are a good company a good chunk of the time.. but Disney has done fucked up quite a bit. This is one of those times. Instead they dumped the show on the Disney Life app in the phillipines and slowly some other countries, basically the Disney Now equilvent over there, and then just sort of forgot about it until Disney Plus launched. And given how many shows they HAVEN’T put on the streamer for again, seemingly no reason, it is a nice suprise the show finally got a release on there in the US. But before that, and proving what a massive mistake just abandoing the show was, the show did gather a massive fanbase via people uploading the episodes online. So yeah the show was treated REALLY shittily for stupid reasons, but thankfully it still has a fanbase to this day and said shabby treatment, as it always does, just encouraged fans to support it harder. So naturally i’m more than happy to give the series some spotlight as fanbase or no, it badly needs it and Disney sure as hell dosen’t want to do it. So if somebody’s gotta do it, might as well be me. This is the Legend of the Three Cablleros. We open on some narration from Xandra, Goddess of Adventure. Granted she hasn’t been identified yet, and won’t be till next episode.. buuuut it’s easier on me to not have to dance around her name so your learning it now. But Xandra narrates that long ago there were epic battles against the good and the evil and all that by epic heroes, and it’s all cumilated in the Legend of the Three Cablleros. Post title drop we’re treated to the boys, in cool looking armor and with neat weapons, fighting a purple monster man as you do in an really beautiful and epic sequence As this scene illustrates the animation for this show is GORGEOUS, a lavish update of the standard disney style with nice use of shadows. It feels almost film quality in it’s work, and it’s an utter treat to watch and opening at the end was a good call: it both ratchets up excitement and allows the first ep to have some action since this one, as part of a two part premiere, is mostly setup. It’s eyecatching, exciting and makes you want to know what the hell is going on. And since Xandra realizes MAYBE starting the story at the climax was a bad idea, she takes us back a bit.

Okay maybe not that far. No we open properly at Donald’s house, where it’s his birthday! And like the movie, it’s Friday the 13th, an excellent call back. Donald’s making his breakfast, boliling some tea and.. talking with the weird foced warped refelection in the kettle who can apparently only say “right back at you handsome, wink”. Seriously I have so many questoins and all of them are about what this guy is, why is Donald so calm about all of this, and is he still alive after Donald destroys his tea kettle later. Donaldo gets a call from Daisy, whose visting to spend the day with him and is waiting patiently int he bad part of town. I didn’t know Duckburg had a bad part of town but given Glomgold has to get his sharks and bombs somewhere, i’m not surprised. Unless he special orders them, but even then what if he needs a shark or a bomb in a hurry? He’s gotta get them somewhere and now we know where. So there’s that. So all’s going well until Donald’s asshole boss calls and forces him to come in despite Donald having the fucking day off and it presumably being on the schedule. So Donald rushes to work, and we do get some great gags but as you’d expect for Donald it goes poorly and he botches a kid’s haircut despite the mother being very rude.. and also a female version of pete. LIke.. did he remarry after the divorce from peg or is that his sister? Does that mean PJ and PIstol have a cousin I never knew about? I want answers dammit.. and picutures of spider-man. Not for any slander job I just really like spider-man.

Eh it’ll do.As i’m doing a full series this time i’m stopping to talk about the main cast as we go soooo.... Tony Anselmo is naturally Donald, even pitching in to consult the crew on Donald’s characterization here, as really what better expert is there? He’s voiced Donald since the original Ducktales and has stuck with the roll since, only taking a break for Mickey and the Roadster racers and that’s likely because between finishing up this series and the Mickey Mouse shorts, and moving on to Ducktales 2017, he likely simply didn’t have the time for it. Granted given how little he was used in the first season of the show, he probably still could’ve done it but regardless, he’s a legend. Daisy is voiced by Tress Macneile, who not only has voiced the character since House of Mouse and is easily the best voice for her, but is also one of the most storied and legendary va’s in the buisness, having been at this since the 80′s with zero signs of stopping. Just to name a few of her more notable roles, in chronological order; Gadget Hackenwrench, Babs Bunny, Agnes Skinner, Charlotte Pickles, Dot Warner (Which as of last year she’s picked up again and will do the same for Babs, just in case you thought i was exagerating on the “zero signs of stopping” thing), Pookie from Hey Arnold, Mom, Hoodsey Bishop, and Queen Oona among MANY, MANY smaller rolls. I didn’t even realize Charlotte or Hodsey were here, she’s that talented and deserves all the praise.. and way better rolls as Daisy than this one but we’ll both get to that and thankfully much like with Tony, the reboot’s giving her character some depth to work with so she gets to reallys tretch her chops. The woman turns 70 here, will likely keep going until she dies, and is wonderful and deserves more respect.

So because this is Donald, life wont’ stop punching him in the face and it turns out his house burned down, the fire people are destroying everything because their assholes, seriously they destroy both a family heirloom and a picture of his parents despite not being on fire. I’d be genuinely suprised if their general strategy wasn’t scremaing “fire, fire fire” and then going “rock rock rock” while they throw rocks on it. Super brucey bonus prize for the first person who gets that refrence and comments on it. I’ll get back to this in a second but SOMEHOW, beisdes loosing his home, all his possesions and his job... it gets even WORSE and Daisy calls, refuses to listen to him despite him having VERY valid excuses and breaks up with him. Oh and then the fire fighters gladly talk about going home to their in tact houses and partners.

So yeah let’s talk about this. This first 6 or 7 minutes.. is why I didn’t return to the show for a while. My brain has a bad habit of glomming onto certain parts of things, so it remembered the rough to sit through and not very funny first act.. and not the rest of the episode which is very good and likely more indiciative about how good the series is. Thankfully it does get better but this first act .. frames things like it’s DONALD’S fault somehow. I mean yes he did burn his house down.. but even that really isn’t his fault. He was called away suddenly, wasn’t thinking and made a mistake. Hell he proabably woudl’ve had more left if the fire department hadn’t gone crazy with the axes. His being called into work? He took the day off, and his boss was just a dick. His screwing up at the job? he was genuinely trying his best and doing his best and the client was just wholly unresonable. Donald did nothing wrong but the episode WANTS to frame him like some sort of screwup.. which he is, it’s Donald.. but not in this case. It was just a string of uncomfortable to watch bad luck that cumilates in him having nothing left. It’s not funny, it’s jsust really sad and it’s REALLY hard to tell the tone their going for as they seem to awkwardly bounce from jokes to Donald being utterly devistated and alone.

And the worst of this.. is Daisy. Daisy is EASILY the most infamous part of the show, as their portryal.. is pretty bad and apparently gets worse. We’ll see as we go but yeah.. her screaming at and breaking up with her boyfriend without listneing to his side and giving the claim we only have HER word on that he’s always screwing up, ON HIS BIRTHDAY no less, when he’s done nothing wrong, does not make a good first impression nor the fact the show seems to AGREE WITH HER. And look Donald is a trainwreck, this is true.. but the show dosen’t remotely portray him as one until AFTER this scene. As I said nothing that happened was his fault. Donald isn’t irresponsible or a screwup or dating a high schooler or anything. He isn’t Scott Pilgrim. He just has really bad luck. Again, we do see some foibles in the scenes to come.. but we don’t see any that would justify her claims, especially since she seemed perfectly happy earlier with him. Now if she’d say brought up some screwups in the first scene, and gently at that, then this would’ve worked.. but as it stands she just comes off as MASSIVELY unsymapthetic.. especially since Donald later calls her nieces over for help, which is objectively weird not gonna lie.. so she now KNOWS he had to move to a new house and his likely burned down.. yet still apparently has nothing good to say about him.

It didn’t help this rubbed me the wrong way in a very special way. As i’ve made plain before I don’t like THIS version of Daisy, the nagging, selfish, vindictive asshole who will gladly try and cheat on donald, dump him at a moments notice and you know PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE. Which just in case you think i’m exagerating...

She fucking upercutted him..and like here for something that isn’t his fault. I mean this Daisy isn’t physically beating Donald.. but that’s a VERY low bar to clear. And emotional abuse is just as bad, so there. My point is too often in the comics when written poorly, Daisy is a pretty terrible person and I REALLY didn’t want a screen adaptation of this form of Daisy. It took a WHILE to recover from not liking daisy over this version, with help from remembering house of mouse, some good barks story with her and the AMAZING Ducktales version and the suprisingly good Quack Pack version.. I did. But yeah.. this is not a good sign of things to come for the character in this show.

So yeah Donald’s heart is in the basement and his week is at an all time low when a post man shows up and gives him a letter.. well puts it in the box for a good gag but semantics. But the letter turns around as his ancestor Clinton Coot left him an inhertance for his 3Xth birthday: a house of some kind in the swanky neighboring town of New Quackmore. And i’ll also say.. it’s REALLY nice that for once, we focus on the Duck side of Donald’s legacy, or rather the coot but semantics, instead of the McDuck part. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love the clanmcduck, always will and I love Ducktales exploration of it.. but it’s still nice to acknowledge Donald comes from two sides and while one of those may be humble farmers, they still accomplished a lot, including founding Duckburg in most continuities including presumably this one. It’s also a good way to seperate thigns from other properties including the reboot: focusing on a part of Donald’s lineage that isn’t usually touched on and making THEM just as badass as the other side.

So we get a quick montage as Donald takes a cab there and takes in the rich and fancy sights. It’s also a brilliant way to set up New Quackmore and it’s attached instutite as a fancy, upperclass place.. and thus perfectly clash it with Donald. Donald ends up getting dropped off at a big mansion.. which is not his , but belongs to the insittutes head, Baron Von Sheldgoose, played by WAYNE KNIGHT.

Hell. Yes. I freaking love Wayne Knight. In case you don’t know who the man above is, or at least don’t recognize his face, Wayne Knight is a very funny and talented actor and voice actor with a lengthy career primarily in side rolls, with the rolls that he broke out with being loveable asshole and Jerry’s enternal nemisis Newman on Seinfeld and Dennis Nedry, aka “that guy who got sprayed acid in his face by those horrifying frilled dinosaurs that will never not haunt my nightmares”. Seriously that scene fucked me up as a kid and I could not watch that part of the movie. For the most part he’s been a side character man but he has done a LOT of voice work, most notable Zurg in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Dojo for the aformentioned and excellent Xiaolin Showdown, and Mr. Blik for Catscratch and I wish he’d do more. He also recently voiced the penguin in Harley Quin so when I get to that you better belivie i’m looking forward to it. Point is while he may not always get the glory, and had to settle for starring in a mediocre tv land sitcom to get a steady paycheck once, the man is VERY talented, very funny and perfectly cast here.

So Donald makes himself home, finds out it’s not HIS home and gets thrown out by the snooty rich asshole’s bodyguards. As you’d expect. Donald does find HIS home, a run down cabana next door to the mansion with caution tape all over. Still Donald takes it best he can as it’s better than no home at all> What he doesn’t take well is finding out from the executor of the will that he’s not the only one inheriting the house... which is absolutley fair. The guy just had the worst day of his life, and this lady didn’t bother to put in the letter to any of them that they were sharing the house. The Sheldgoose thing was just an average Donald screw up. This is just this lady going...

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But yes we meet our boys.. and the introductions are naturally given this series is about them the best we’ve gotten so far: Jose is thrown off a bus, having ran out of fair, and having wooed all the ladies on board, and quickly charms the executor and is perfectly cordial to Donald, while Panchito parachutes out of a plane and marvels at how he went from nothing to having two new best friends, a run down shack and a sleezy lawyer! In short the two make a great first impression, helped by wonderful casting. Jose is voiced by Eric Bauza, a talented voice actor whose had WAY too many roles to list here, but two of the most notable are being the current voice of Bugs and Daffy, and his most notable role outside that recently has been playing Splinter in Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But the guy is endlessly talented, seems really nice, and is easily one of my faviorite Jose’s so far after just one episode. He just.. gets the character perfectly and is thankfully NOT another white guy stepping into the role, so that’s nice. He easily oozes the charm and layabout nature Jose and was a natural in the role and i hope he gets to take it up again at some point. Speaking of naturals we have Jamie Camil as Panchito, who easily steps into the guys boundless energy and the sterotpical bits are swapped out for making him a cloud cuckoolander instead, which I genuinely love and fits the character perfectly. He’s best known for CW Soap Jane the Virgin, where his charcter Rodrigo just sounds like a delight, but has recently picked up a pretty good voice acting career, vocing Don Karnage in the Ducktales reboot, Globgor in Star vs the Forces of Evil and Todd’s Stepdad George in Bojack Horseman. I only hope he gets more voice work as he’s really damn great at it and it’s wonderful to get to see him in a role that’s not limited to a few episodes at best for a change.

So Donald’s less than happy about this, again it’s hard to really be that mad at him when he’s had a really, REALLY bad day and wasn’t told about this, but it’s kept to just the light level of grumpy as to not make him unlikeable. Granted after that intro it’d take a LOT to make him unsympathetic, but after their version of Daisy I really dont’ want to test this series. Our boys also find out they have a groundskeeper, ari, aka THE ARCUAN BIRD! He’s just a delight any time he pops up, doing his usual “ya ta ta ta” bit, and being adorable and hilarioius as always.. and also hilariously failing to fix the boys door. So Donald ends up just accepting he has roomates now, nothing he can do, and the three explore the house finding all sorts of cool old artifacts, feeling they’ve stumbled onto something specail. And you know what that means: YARD SALE! Seriously it feels like a bit out of Wet Hot American Summer or Stella, a series from the same creators you really should check out and that is high praise, trust me.

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I wish this series was streaming somewhere.. I mean we finally got Clone HIgh streaming Viacom, get on that. Anyways, it’s just.. fucking hilarious, and a LOT of this episode is once we walk back from the writers kicking donald in the junk and acting like it was his fault. Once Donald gets his inhertiance, the episode picks up immensley and we see the shows real charm and hilarirty fly, with jokes coming at a rapid and wonderful pace. The show really did impress me with the second half and made me utterly excited for tommrow.. or I guess today’s, look at the follow up. But we’re still in this episode and being a rich asshole, Sheldgoose isn’t happy about a yard sale, though given this series standards, we not only get some great deliveres from Knight of an outraged “A YARD SALE?!”... but a wonderful gag where Sheldgoose out to white guy it up and yell at them over this..accidently takes a wrong turn in his massive house, and turns around, not loosing how upset he is once. Meanwhile, we meet.. April, May and June. Yeah apparnetly Della isn’t dead or lost in this continuity, so the boys are MIA, and are instead replaced by Daisy’s Nieces, who I hope show up in the reboot before it ends. Especially since the show makes them WAY more tolerable than classic huey dewey and louie and instead enjoyable like Ducktales HDL. While not as indvidual as those three, the three are still idendtical outside of outfits, their voice actress Jessica DiCicco uses her consderiable talents and experince to give each one a unique voice, so while they all share a voice actress, none of them sound alike. And to round out our main cast for now, as our last members will be joining us fully next time, let’s talke about Jessica DiCicco. Jessica is a very talented and increasingly prolific voice actor and if you haven’t heard of her, and you probably have, you’ve defintely heard her voice. Starting out with Disney, hence why the probably called on her for this, she did the voices of Maggie for the Buzz on Maggie and Melina for Emperor’s New School before breaking out as Flame Princess on Adventure Time, whose both one of my faviorite characters from the show and one we’ll be digging into starting next month. And not one to rest easily she picked up a second set of iconic rolls vocing Lynn and Lucy Loud on The Loud HOuse, and funnily enough using those voices for two of the girls here. And along with Loud House she’s also currently starring in it’s Pony and is int he main cast of Close Enough as Candace. My point is she’s exceedingly talented.. as is this whole cast, as it’s a DAMN excellent cast and just further sells that this series deserves better. We’ll get into the girls more next time as they don’t do much here other than get called in by Donald for help, with what I saw of episode 2 fleshing them out more. Point is Sheldgoose offers a million dollars for the cabana and all it’s stuff and the boys are glad to sell.. they just have to find something Sheldgoose desperately wants, a mysterious golden atlas encrusted with Jewels. Our heroes head in to find it with Panchito finding it, and being very specific about it. We also get a nice call back to Ari destroying the door as Jose cleverly calls on him to destroy the lock. So our heroes open the book... and a goddess pops out and threatens to kill them all.

Final Thoughts: Dope-A-Cabana is a decent intro the series, but as i’ve said it’s heavily hampered by a weak and mean spirited first act. But once it gets going it REALLY gets going and as part 1 one of a two part pilot, it does it’s job well once it does get going: introducing our three boys and one of our antagonists well and setting up the side cast and preparing for our last to major additions Next Time: The Boys go on their first adventure, Sheldgoose finds a boss and the girls find their voice. Thanks for Reading, Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.

#the legend of the three caballeros #The Three Caballeros #donald duck #Jose Carioca #panchito romero miguel junipero francisco quintero gonzalez #panchito pistoles #xandra #april duck #may duck #june duck #baron von sheldgoose #daisy duck #pete pete #disney plus #disney channel #animation #disney

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taylorinthetardis · 3 years

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My theory for how WandaVision will play out and what it means for the MCU as a whole

***SPOILERS WILL BE UNDER THE CUT, READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL***

*sorry if this doesn’t make a lot of sense, my brain is bad at having linear thoughts*

So. Since Agnes has revealed herself to be Agatha Harkness, and she’s been pulling the strings all along, here’s where I think they’re going with this.

I don’t think Agatha is of the normal MCU universe. I think she’s from either the same universe as Evan Peters’ Quicksilver (which is why we didn’t get normal MCU Pietro, but got X-Men Peter instead). She knew enough to know they were siblings, but didn’t know Pietro so she couldn’t conjur him/pull him from his timeline before he died to bring him to Westview. So she got the closest thing. Another thought I have is that Peter isn’t Peter and is actually either Mephisto in disguise or Agatha’s son Nicholas.

I also assume, given the comic book storyline that is being followed here, that she’s working with Mephisto and possibly the Salem Seven as well.

If the Salem Seven are involved, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dottie turns out to be one of its members. I also think she could be Clea, the guardian (Sorcereress Supreme) of the dark universe where Dormammu lives. She could have been pulled there through the Nexus and became unwittingly apart of Wanda’s fantasy.

I think the twins are probably gone for good, since in the comics they were killed when Mephisto came back for the shards of his soul that were used to make them. Agatha was shown to be behind a lot of things in Westview so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was behind Wanda giving birth to the twins as well, just like in the comics.

I also think this is going to end with either Vision being totally taken out of the picture or we’ll find out for sure that the twins are gone and/or dead or both of those things, and Wanda will completely snap, causing the Multiverse to become unstable and thus setting up the events of Doctor Strange 2 and probably Spider Man 3 as well.

So, how does this set up Doctor Strange 2 and how might this connect to Loki? Wanda is canonically known as a Nexus Being in the comics. This means that she had the ability to affect probabilities and, by extension, the future. Nexus Beings are keystones of the Multiverse and can affect its stability. What I believe is happening here is that Agatha is exploiting Wanda’s powers to affect the multiverse as a whole and possibly trigger its collapse. I think this is going to set up the so-called “Multiverse of Madness” by either bringing together the Nexus Beings from around the Multiverse, which would destabilize everything and cause a lot of chaos, or by manipulating the other Nexus Beings through Wanda (since Nexus Beings can astral project throughout the multiverse) and causing chaos in each separate universe that Doctor Strange will have to fix by travelling to multiple universes to put things back to rights. It’s also possible, like I mentioned above, that Wanda will become too overwhelmed with grief by the end of this and totally lose control of her powers, causing the Multiverse to become unstable/on the verge of collapse.

What does this have to do with Loki? Well, the Nexus Beings are watched over by both cosmic entities, like Uatu the Watcher and Immortus, but also the Time Variance Authority, or TVA. If you’ve seen the Loki trailer, you may remember that the group that Loki is either working for/with or being held captive by is the TVA. I think it’s possible that something (probably Wanda) is going to cause the timeline to destabilize and Loki will be trying to set things right, but because he’s Loki he’ll probably either make it worse or try and exploit it for his own gain. Either way it seems like it’s gonna be a fun watch.

Another note about WandaVision. So Paul Bethany said there’s one more big cameo that no one has guessed yet and he was super excited to do it because it was someone that he really admires and hadn’t gotten to work with yet in the MCU.

I think it’s Samuel L Jackson/Nick Fury.

So, stay with me on this one. So, when SHIELD was SHIELD, it wasn’t just SHIELD, it was also HYDRA. What if SWORD isn’t just SWORD? Two agencies operating under the guise of one, both with very different directives. What if the SWORD we’ve seen so far is actually just HYDRA or some other evil organization masquerading as SWORD? I believe that Maria Rambeau founded SWORD as an agency to deal with space-based stuff, since she has first hand knowledge that aliens are out there and they aren’t all friendly. But what if somewhere along the way SWORD was infiltrated? I think Nick Fury has been Talos longer than we think, maybe not the whole time he’s been in the MCU, but for a while. I think Maria sent him on the mission with the Skrull that we see in the end of Far from Home. But since Maria died, and Hayward took over running SWORD, things have been headed in a similar direction as when Pierce was running SHIELD. The bad guys are in control and are manipulating things to suit their own ends. That’s why Hayward was trying to bring Vision back online when Wanda took him. He was probably planning on using Vision as a weapon. I think Fury is gonna make it back to Earth and with Monica’s help, is going to take down whoever has infiltrated SWORD. It’s possible that this could be setting up Secret Invasion as well. In the comics that refers to the Skrulls because they shape shift, but we also saw in Captain Marvel that the Kree come in both blue humanoid and flesh colored humanoid forms. What if the Kree are the secret invaders and are trying to take over Earth as revenge for the events of Captain Marvel? Hayward and other SWORD members could be Kree pretending to be humans, biding their time until a major attack/overthrow of humanity would be possible.

The setup to a Multiverse story is super fun to see, anyone who is also a fan of the CW’s Arrowverse knows that all too well. The chances for fan service moments and call backs to previous films and shows that are not generally considered part of that specific universe are numerous. We could see old Spider-Men! We could see both Fantastic Fours! You could, conceivably, have Chris Evans on screen as both Captain America and Human Torch, while also having Michael B Jordan as another Human Torch and Killmonger! Both timelines in the X Men universe could be represented! You can bring in the Defenders, the Agents of SHIELD, the Inhumans! Miles Morales and the various Spider People from the Spider-Verse! The possibilities are numerous once you start talking Multiverse. It basically just comes down to who is feeling up for a role reprisal.

I’m stoked to see where this ends up taking us. I can’t wait for the rest of Phase 4 and beyond!

#wandavision spoilers #wandavision #mcu #mcu phase 4 #marvel

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amandajoyce118 · 4 years

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Agents Of SHIELD S7E05 “A Trout In The Milk” Easter Eggs And References

The team heads to the 1970s where they discover that Hydra has received a hand up from the Chronicoms.

You know the drill. If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you’ve already seen the episode. Especially since I’m watching the episode four days after it aired. So, yes. There are spoilers.

Those Opening Credits

They are so very ‘70s. If you’ve ever watched a sitcom or a spy series from the era, you’ll see nods in the sequence.

Sousa Wonders About Ending Up In The Present

Perhaps Sousa’s questioning of Daisy and Coulson about ending up in their present time is a nod to the actor’s cameo in Avengers. Let’s hope the show actually ties those two together instead of just giving us an Easter egg or two.

Dooley’s Booth

Coulson talks about Dooley’s booth in the old bar that becomes a SHIELD meeting spot. Dooley was the chief of the New York office of the SSR, for those who didn’t watch Agent Carter.

Bendeery English Ale

Daisy drinks one of these in the SHIELD bar, and there’s also a poster for it in Malick’s office. It is the official unofficial beer of the show. It’s named for a friend of Nick Blood’s and first appeared back in season two.

You Always Bounce Back

Yeah, this is, what, the third time someone has referenced Elena’s first episode of the series and her powers. That feels like it’s not going to bode well for her, but not sure what to make of all the on the nose references just yet.

‘70s SHIELD Uniforms

Those blue and white jumpsuits are straight out of the comics of the same era. Yep.

Project Insight

We all saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier, right? Project Insight is the big project created by Hydra that targets “threats” to the world in the form of Stephen Strange and Tony Stark. In other words, it calculates the probability that people will go against Hydra and advises on whether or not they should be eliminated.

The Episode Title

The phrase is, as Sousa points out, an “old timey one,” and it’s fun that it gets used repeatedly in the episode.

Coulson Is From Processing

When Malick asks Coulson where he’s from at the bar, Coulson says he’s from processing. That’s a callback to season five when the team ended up in the future. It’s what Deke told them to say when anyone asked where they were from so they wouldn’t give away that they were time travelers.

Come With Me If You Want To Continue To Exist

This show loves to nod to its sci-fi and action movies, right? While Elena talks about Bond movies early in the episode, this line is a nod to the Terminator franchise.

The Launch Hangar

Where the Insight rocket/satellite combo launches from in the middle of the lake is where the zephyr usually launches from in the future.

The Episode Tag

Nathaniel Malick isn’t even supposed to exist anymore, but he’s sure working on living up to the family name, huh? His wanting to talk to Daniel Whitehall about surgically transferring abilities should sound familiar. Whitehall lives for so long by surgically transferring Jiaying (Daisy’s mom, remember her?) to himself.

The List Of SHIELD Assets/Hydra Threats

I saved this one for last because this is where the majority of the episode Easter eggs come from. When Daisy and Sousa get the list of “threats” for Project Insight in the ‘70s, the computer has a nice “Level 7 only” at the top of the screen. That’s a nod to how the show began, with Coulson as a Level 7 agent, welcoming Ward to his new status on the team.

Sousa and Daisy mention that Bruce Banner, Peggy Carter, and Nick Fury all show up on the list. The long list features some other names that should be familiar. There are actually two sets of lists, but it’s really hard to make out the first one, so help a girl out if I miss some names.

Roberto Gonzalez and Victoria Hand both show up. You might remember them from earlier seasons of the show. Vic is killed by Ward when he breaks Garrett out of SHIELD custody and Gonzalez is killed by Jiaying when he tries to have a meeting with her. I believe Isabel Hartley is also on the first page of the list, but not positive because her name is blurry. In the comics, she dated Vic, but she was killed in the first episode of season two.

Also on the list? Jim Morita and Gabe Jones. They’re both Howling Commandos. Gabe also happens to be Trip’s grandfather while Jim is grandfather to Peter Parker’s school principal.

Some more familiar names that appear are Nicole Amador, Susan Morse, and Nathan Bowen. The first is likely a relative of Akela Amador from season one, while Susan Morse is mother to Bobbi Morse in the comics. Nathan Bowen is the father of Tandy (from Cloak And Dagger) and a scientist who works for Roxxon.

Still with me? Good. Because there are even more.

Conrad Murphy is the father of Sandra Murphy in the comics. Sandra is one of the “Caterpillars” or Secret Warriors in the comics, though she’s not on Daisy’s team. She actually is on the team sent to spy on the Russian organization Leviathan (which was in Agent Carter) and her entire team ends up dead.

Andrew and Margaret Nelson appear - though on separate halves. I’m curious if they’re meant to be relatives of Foggy Nelson from Daredevil, though their names don’t ring any bells for me. It’s worth noting that the show has connected to Daredevil in the past with other Easter eggs and Skye and Matt both having a connection to St. Agnes.

There’s a Susan Parker on the list, who could be related to Peter Parker, or she could be a really random reference to a character that appeared in one comic book in the ‘40s? Likewise, Michael Phillips is a name that is connected to a mercenary who worked with the Punisher in the comics who used to be a CIA agent, but that feels like too common of a name. (There’s also an assistant director with the name who works on the show, so he could just be a nod to him.)

Betty Wright is a famous singer who actually rose to fame in the ‘70s. She died this year. She wrote the original “Where Is The Love” and has been sampled on tons of R&B tracks. Likewise, Mark Roberts might be another pop culture nod since he was an actor who started working in the ‘30s, though that was just his stage name, so who knows?

I’ve got nothing on Ben Taylor, Ben Harris, James Cook (unless they’re talking about the British explorer who would have already been dead), Ronald Collins, Roger Stewart, Leonard Torres, Robert Moore (though I did think initially that it said Morse and wondered if Bobbi was named after her dad), and David Robinson. I also didn’t catch the last name for the entry that starts with Theresa. But that’s - a lot. So, some of the names are presumably filler names, entered just because they were ones the team could use, and they could also be nods to people the VFX team knows in real life.

Edited to add:

Chastity McBride

I completely forgot to note that May’s alias in this episode is a real SHIELD agent in the comics. She’s only appeared in a handful of comics and her main mission was stopping John Garrett and Elektra from an assassination plot.

I think this is the longest list I’ve done in a while, so no speculation this time. Until next week. Or, I guess, later this week!

#agents of shield #aos season 7 #aos easter eggs #aos spoilers #mcu

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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WandaVision: The Unanswered Questions From the Marvel Series

https://ift.tt/38r7iqE

This article contains WandaVision spoilers.

After two months and nine episodes, WandaVision came to a close. One of the more unique projects to come out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the show mixed mystery and horror with sitcom pastiche and understandings of grief under the superhero umbrella. The first step in both Phase 4 and Disney+’s Marvel lineup came out a success and built towards future projects.

Then again, its mysterious nature worked against it at times. Figuring out answers on a weekly basis meant trying to stay one step ahead of the show and sometimes it got viewers going in the wrong direction. There was no Mephisto or X-Men or Fantastic Four. On one hand, you can say that people are getting angry about stuff that they were never promised, but there is a feeling that when combing over the details of the show, they did cause us to ask some questions that never quite had a satisfying answer.

After all, even Agnes’ joke story about being out of town due to her mother-in-law visiting proved to be an important detail down the line.

As we sit back and wait for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to pick up where our power couple left off, here are some lingering questions we’re left with from WandaVision.

What happened to the beekeeper?

The beekeeper was the first truly haunting moment of the series. Sure, “Stop it!” and the exploding radio were creepy in their own ways, but the idea of Wanda and Vision walking outside at night to find a lone beekeeper sneaking out of the sewer and quietly looking at them was outright nightmare fuel. It was a major instance of wondering what in God’s name was going on, and that’s even before Wanda simply noped out, hit rewind, and retconned the scene from happening.

We later discover that the beekeeper is SWORD Agent Franklin and his appearance is just Wanda’s reality making sense of a man in a hazmat suit. We see him crawling out of the sewer from his point of view, but then…nothing.

While the reveal of his identity doesn’t lead us to AIM henchmen or Swarm (star of Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark), it does explain the nature of Wanda’s neighborhood. That still makes it weird that we never hear from him again.

Or do we? While it’s never made explicit on the show itself, supposedly the guy playing the ice cream man in the episode 5 intro is the same actor as Agent Franklin. Perhaps the beekeeper didn’t die, but was just assimilated into a happier role.

Who was in Witness Protection?

FBI Agent James Woo gets the story rolling by coming to Westview in search of someone in witness protection. The complete lack of anyone having any information or even memory of this person is what gets SWORD involved and Monica Rambeau sucked into Westview. In the end, the identity is just not important.

But it feels like it should be, right? Having Woo go from coast to coast to follow up on this person seems pretty major. You would think it would have come up here or there, but nope. If anything, I guess it just goes to show that Jimmy Woo is a true professional for keeping his trap shut.

Who is the aerospace engineer?

I can understand that throwing Evan Peters’ Quicksilver at us was a good way to distract us from everything Agnes was doing, but the aerospace engineer? Come on! That was definitely more deliberate than the witness protection and they know it.

Monica brings up a friend who is smart enough to get her to break into the Hex all over again. All that’s missing is a smile and wink to the camera. The writers gave us something so blatant that it would be ridiculous NOT to speculate who she was talking about. This had to be an important cameo leading to something major down the line. Would we get Reed Richards? Blue Marvel? Beast? Dr. Nemesis? NFL Superpro?

Even when Monica’s dream vehicle didn’t do the job, it was still believed that this aerospace engineer would still get a dramatic shout-out down the line or a post-credits scene. Nope. At most, this throwaway friend is like that scene in Thor when Erik Selvig was talking up his gamma scientist friend who went missing because of SHIELD.

What did the commercials really mean?

It isn’t hard to figure out that the commercials were based on Wanda’s trauma: the bomb that killed her parents, her time with Hydra, the events of Captain America: Civil War, and her inability to deal with her grief in a meaningful way that didn’t involve torturing and enslaving innocent people. While it isn’t really important to see how the sausage is made, I’m left wondering what the commercials actually were.

From the fourth episode, we do know that the commercials were part of the transmissions. Darcy was able to see the one for the watch, but was focused on something else. Otherwise, I’m sure she would have been wondering about the inclusion of the HYDRA logo. The way everyone in the SWORD collaboration just glossed over the commercials is rather weird.

One of the popular theories was that the man and woman featured in all the live-action commercials were going to be revealed as Wanda and Pietro’s parents. That turned out not to be true, so…were they also Westview citizens? That would be disturbing because to make sense of the commercial narratives and the sitcom narratives, that family would have to be forcefully separated from the rest of the town.

Did Agatha magic up the stop-motion commercial for Yo-Magic? Because that was about her too much to be something Wanda’s psyche came up with.

Is there more to “Fake Pietro” Ralph Bohner?

“Fietro” was the big red herring of the series. After all that wondering of whether he was the first true step in bringing mutants into the MCU or if he was literal Satan in disguise, we discovered he was Agnes’ hypnotized “husband” whose payoff was nothing more than a dick joke.

Then again, he was already called Peter in the Fox universe, so it’s not such a hard stretch to make him a Bohner.

Will The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Become a Victim of WandaVision’s Success?

By Kirsten Howard

Movies

A Tale of Two Pietros: Explaining the MCU X-Men Problem With a Mutant Speedster

By Gavin Jasper

Monica’s ability to see energy in its various forms allowed her to figure out that Agatha was controlling Ralph with a mystical necklace. Once she tore it off, Ralph immediately gave up and that was the last we saw of him. But what does that mean in terms of his powers?

I imagine Agatha gave him the speed powers so he could play the part of Pietro in order to get intel on Wanda’s magic. Just because she no longer controls him, does that mean he’s physically back to normal as well? Because, hey, he might not be the Quicksilver from the X-Men universe, but he could totally play the role of Quicksilver if Marvel ends up doing a cinematic version of the Thunderbolts or Dark Avengers.

Where did White Vision go?

Vision’s Soul fought Vision’s Body and after we got enough lasers and explosions, the two talked out their differences. Hex Vision convinced his pasty counterpart to stand down and did him the favor of unlocking his dormant memories (that he asked permission was such a nice touch). White Vision recalled everything from the moment of his creation to Thanos pulling out the Mind Stone. Accepting who he is, White Vision flew off and was never referenced again.

I supposed the real question to ask is when will we see him next? Obviously, he has a lot to think about. He’s an emotional husk with lots of data to work through. Does he love Wanda in this form? Can he still love Wanda in this form, knowing what she’s become? As someone who was pro-government oversight, how will it affect him knowing that the government outright betrayed his wishes and memory? Where does someone like White Vision go from here?

Maybe we’ll see him in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Perhaps, when a new Avengers movie finally happens, Vision will show himself again. Or if they go in the direction of Young Avengers, he could be the wise father to the sons he’s never met.

It would be pretty wild if White Vision relearned how to convey emotions by watching Simon Williams movies.

What are the twins, exactly?

“FOR THE CHILDREN!” is what the neighbors echoed like a brainwashed cult, culminating in Wanda’s very unusual pregnancy. It could have been Wanda’s subconscious telling her to have kids. It could have been Agatha testing out her ability to create life from nothing. It also may have been the children themselves.

We never did fully get a grasp on what Billy and Tommy were. Wanda had a very unnatural birth and, outside of being able to age themselves a couple times, the boys seemed fairly down to earth and good-natured, while also still capable of questioning Wanda’s reality. There was nothing ominous about them outside of the weird nature of their very existence.

When Wanda relaxed the Hex, they started to disappear. When she ended the Hex completely, they once again vanished. Simply saying that they were two kids Wanda conjured up out of thin air would have been an acceptable answer.

WandaVision: What Wanda’s Kids Mean for the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

By Gavin Jasper

Will The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Become a Victim of WandaVision’s Success?

By Kirsten Howard

Instead, when Wanda fully accepted what her reality was and that it had to end, she thanked her children for “choosing” her to be their mother. She was able to explain what Vision was in the grand scheme of things, but she remained silent when it came to those kids. They were an outside force that sought her out. That’s what her final conversation certainly implies.

The post-credits scene had her studying the Darkhold while being alerted to Billy and Tommy screaming for help. They still exist, in some form, somewhere. Their true nature probably won’t be better explained until the Doctor Strange sequel.

Speculation on this one is a pain in the ass because even the comics explanation is a whirlwind of confusion.

What really happened to Agatha Harkness?

Wanda doesn’t kill Agatha, but does punish her by forcing her to be stuck in the living Hell of portraying Agnes the nosey neighbor. It’s a harsh punishment, but her intent doesn’t jibe with Agatha’s post-Hex status. People know about her. Even if the last few in-universe episodes of WandaVision weren’t on the SWORD airwaves, she was still playing the role of final boss and having magic fights in the sky. The people of Westview saw that.

Wouldn’t this mean that she can’t just go back to her “nosy neighbor” role and that she’s likely destined for a cell? She’ll be lucky if the government isn’t doing experiments on her, which is extra messed up when you imagine her acting like Ned Flanders.

At least she’ll be kept subdued for when the Scarlet Witch needs her. Or maybe she too will join whatever Thunderbolts/Dark Avengers team we may see down the line.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Just give us more Kathryn Hahn, damn it!

The post WandaVision: The Unanswered Questions From the Marvel Series appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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kiss-my-freckle · 3 years

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8x9 Rewatch: The Cyranoid

“I can see it's not Keen. But what I can't figure out is why it's not Keen.” Couple this episode with The Wellstone Agency. Aram and Ressler have what they need to find Liz. They just need to put their heads together.

This episode gives you everything you need for the rest of the series. If you want my summation, skip to the bottom because I included every pertinent dialogue.

A parallel to Pete in 5x7.

Man on the phone: They know. I don't know how, but they know.

Pete: They knew I put in a request with CODIS. I don't know how, but they did.

A parallel to Aram in 7x1. The Seventh Seal, for those who don’t know.

Red: You all look like you're in a Bergman film playing chess with Death.

Aram: Now we are both eating Polish sausage and playing chess with Death.

If you haven't noticed yet, they've got a coffee cup theme going on. This is like their 4th or 5th time with the coffee cups. To understand this, you have to go to the opening diner scene in 2x21.

Tom: Alright, dream scenario. We finish our coffee...

Bremmer’s statement pushes back to 8x3 and 5x9, for a reason.

Bremmer: He'll never forgive you for this

Cooper: What you did to her, what you did to Katarina, I don't think Elizabeth will ever forgive you for it. Red: She might. Some day. But before then...

Liz: Can you forgive me? Red: Yes. Will you be able to forgive yourself?

Red: I fear she may do something that she can never recover from. And of all the tragedies that you and I have experienced together, that would be the most tragic. We have to do - do everything in our power to prevent that from happening.

Apparently, Neville is the reason Liz lost 30 years with her mother.

Red: Make no mistake, Harold. By going after Townsend, Elizabeth is putting her life in grave danger.

I like the pest control van Ressler and Park use for their surveillance. The majority of Ressler's scenes push the idea of him turning to Red for help.

Gina: They say two things will survive a nuclear holocaust - cockroaches and twinkies.

A lot of their dialogues push back to Ressler's storyline with Prescott. Turning to Red now to help Liz ... it’s the kind of favor that wouldn't put Ressler in his debt because it's not for him, it's for Liz. if he ended up saving her by pulling her back in, Red would consider himself in Ressler’s debt just as he did with Aram.

Aram: A war criminal and an international fugitive. Your parents must be proud.

This line of dialogue leads me to believe Neville is an international fugitive because Mary is the war criminal. Aram talks about her crimes later on in the episode. Everyone is led to believe Townsend got his hands on Liz.

Cooper: You know Townsend. What hope does she have? Red: He's a very dangerous man. Elizabeth kidnapped his sister, and now he has Elizabeth. If I were her, I'd feel pretty hopeless.

Neville knows what Elizabeth looks like, which means he likely saw her in the news when she was on the run in S3. As you watch how Liz controls her Cyranoid, understand this is how much Tom and the woman from Paris have been controlling Liz. It's an emotional hostage-taking.

Liz: No, I know who I am. I am the puppet of some high-functioning sociopath.

Liz: A marionette with a high-functioning sociopath pulling my strings.

When you have someone who controls what Liz believes, and therefore, what she feels... you have someone who has taken Liz emotionally hostage. Period. That's why no one recognizes her.

Red: I'm not worried about my hide. I worry about Elizabeth's. I strongly suggest you do the same.

Cooper automatically assumes Red killed Rakitin's patsy, and because of that, basically reveals he's the one who has Red's thumb drive. This gives Red his open to demand he return it.

Liz: You believe my mother was murdered by the Kazanjian Brothers. That never happened. They betrayed you, cut a deal with my mother to fake her death and buy her the time she needed to clear her name. Neville: I don't believe any of this.

William: Well, whoever I am is irrelevant. Katarina Rostova is dead.

Neville: Katarina Rostova is N-13.

William: Assuming, for the sake of discussion, you are who you claim to be, what proof could you possibly have? Woman: I have the identity of N-13. William: You're N-13.

Neville Townsend and William Heidegger shared the same belief. Katarina is N-13 and she's dead. By using “N-13″ as an unidentified codename, it allows them to drag out Red's identity reveal further and evens the war with Townsend. Both Katarina and Red are N-13 because Red is Katarina. Liz thinks she's avenging her mother when she's putting three generations at risk... her mother, herself, and her daughter. Using N-13 also makes it possible for Red to survive this war. If they didn’t do it this way, Red wouldn’t, that’s a guarantee. I told people this when they first brought up the idea of Neville being the big bad. If Red’s real identity got outed to the world, he wouldn’t survive it. He’d have to hide out on his island for the rest of his life.

Neville: Are you saying Reddington killed her to hide the fact he's N-13? Liz: Yes. And I can prove it. That he's the reason your family's dead.

Ilya Koslov is the only person who can prove the identity of N-13 because Dom is dead. It's likely Sikorsky can prove it, but I don't think Liz will be able to push that far.

Rakitin: The witch hunt is over and there's one less government knob sticking his nose into our business. You should be thanking me.

Red had his witch trial in S6. He’s a witch because he’s Katarina. Rakitin comes off a lot like Tom Keen, and I do think it’s purposeful. He's one of Red's assets.

Red: You tricked them. For a day. Maybe two. But they'll see past it, and when they do, they'll come looking for you.

Katarina: The news of my death would fool most. It won't fool Velov.

I believe his 30 year project is the Devry map and the blacklist, and it's a shared mission because Red is Katarina and Liz is Masha. A mythic battle that he and Liz are central to because they're mother and daughter Rostova. I think he's trying to remove the threats that separated them for 30 years. They've already cleared out the Cabal. Their affiliates likely went blue, so Red and Liz still have a massive blue player war to fight.

Liz: I wouldn't have gone to the effort of taking your sister, luring you out, of making this pitch unless I was certain. Raymond Reddington killed my mother because she had uncovered the truth.

Most people don’t see it yet, but this war is on the opposite side of S5.

Liz: You can trust me.

That’s why Liz is telling Neville he can trust her. For the same reason Tom told Red he can trust him. Because Red couldn’t trust Tom, and Neville can’t trust Liz.

Tom: You can trust me. Red: No, I can't. I hired you to do a job. The rules were explicit, and you violated them. You're unreliable.

Red KNOWS Neville can’t trust Liz.

Red: Elizabeth Keen is not to be trusted.

Neville is gonna find out she’s unreliable. She’s STILL Red’s daughter lol. This is where Liz's hopelessness will come in that Red spoke of earlier.

Red: He's a very dangerous man. Elizabeth kidnapped his sister, and now he has Elizabeth. If I were her, I'd feel pretty hopeless.

This Cyranoid changed everything when she surrendered herself.

Cooper: We don't have to find her because she found us. She surrendered herself out front five minutes ago.

A quick gather of dialogues to show you what I mean.

Ressler: I can see it's not Keen, but what I can't figure out is why it's not Keen.

Cooper: Seven years ago - she was kind, enthusiastic, decent. Under your tutelage - she's become someone I fail to recognize.

Red: I'll tell you what she's not doing - behaving like you would.

Aram: Who are you? Liz: You know who I am and why I have to do this. Aram: You forged my signature to get 16 ounces of Semtex. You nearly killed Mr. Reddington and Ressler. I knew who you were, Liz. But I don't recognize who you've become.

Ressler: I'm just saying, if she did reach out to you, if you actually saw her, you might think differently. Aram: Did she reach out to you? Ressler: No, she didn't. But if she did... I'm just saying it might make a difference.

Aram: He didn't "say," he ordered. Ressler: Yeah, but I told you, if you saw her you'd think differently.

Aram: You were right. It is different.

THIS is exactly what the task force needed. To change Liz's face so they can know what they're seeing - a completely different person. Liz IS an imposter. She’s been an imposter since she stepped off Tom’s boat in 2x22. The task force still believes Red is Ilya, but this is where Liz parallels Rederina and both parallel the Deer Hunter. All that’s left for Liz is a gender change.

She's becoming Tom Keen, but keeping her face. A Pinocchio wife and daughter because they’re holding her emotionally hostage. Tom, by making her believe he’s the father of Agnes. The woman from Paris, by making her believe she’s her mother. Tom and the woman from Paris are pulling Liz’s strings. She’s a fucking marionette.

Cyranoid: I told you, it's me. Ressler: No.

Cyranoid: Why don't we start with what happened between you and me the night before I went on the run? Ressler: Who the hell are you?

Just like Reddington. “Who are you?” The entire fucking point. Imagine Liz changing her face to look like her Cyranoid. They'd never see Liz again. THIS is what Katarina did by permanently changing her face to become Raymond. You might as well Consider “Raymond” to be Katarina’s Cyranoid.

Dom: Last time I saw my daughter was in this rearview mirror nearly 30 years ago.

Put this entire Post Office playout in 2x22 context and you can see my memory wipe theory. You just have to consider Mary's death like Connolly's. That gif set is here. Liz is wrong. “Almost everything” has changed because she had her memory wiped. The only thing that hasn’t changed is her face. That’ll be left for Agnes.

Cyranoid: You should let me go. Ressler: Those days are over. Cyranoid: Why? Nothing's changed. Ressler: No. You ordered your puppet to murder Bremmer. Now you're helping her escape. Cyranoid: I've missed you. Ressler: Well, how about we get together? Have a little chat.

I love how Panbaker says this when they haven’t even told her Red is Ilya.

Panabaker: Which is why I give you a perilously long leash. But it's not so long that I'll approve granting immunity to someone whose identity I am unaware of. Cooper: Ressler, go over the forensics again. Facial recognition, prints. See what you can find. Panabaker: Be good if that included your dignity.

Ressler doesn't see that he has the power to make Liz surrender. They need to stop their physical search and start an emotional one. They lost her in S2.

Red: She's the master of her own puppet. An avatar of herself.

Liz is a puppet controlling her own puppet.

It makes her Grendel’s mother. Little Red Riding Hood.

Liz: Before we had Agnes... I thought Tom and I were gonna adopt.

Tom: Tonight, you are finally gonna see what this little monster looks like.

A parallel to 3x17.

Neville: You need me on your team. This is my price. Are you willing to pay it?

Red: Do you really want your child to pay the price for that mistake for the rest of his or her life?

A parallel to 7x10.

Cyranoid: Your brother loves you very much.

Woman: But she asked me to give you a big hug and tell you how much she loves you.

I believe this will be the means of Agnes’ hit. Revenge for Mary Bremmer.

Mary: I've done nothing wrong. Aram: Except use chemical weapons on men, women, and children.

Aram: Have you seen what she's done? Chemical Mary. The way her weapons have been used. Against civilians... children. The Agent Keen I know wouldn't use someone like this to get to Townsend or anyone else. She'd arrest her and make sure she couldn't hurt anyone again.

Aram: Whoever she is, she is not our problem. Now, this... this is our problem. Douma and Khan Shaykhun. Syrian children victimized by chlorine gas. We have a war criminal in custody. I am going to confront her with her war crimes.

For the same reason Victor Skovic took over Dr. Krilov’s business when he got arrested. Neville knows his sister. He’ll tailor his revenge to fit her.

Separating this section. A parallel to 7x10.

Aram: She'd arrest her and make sure she couldn't hurt anyone again.

Ressler: You scrambled my brain, and I'm here to make sure that you never do that to anyone else.

Separating this section. A parallel to 3x15.

Aram: Whoever she is, she is not our problem. Now, this... this is our problem.

Red: Tom is your Tom problem.

You basically have to put Agnes in Red’s place. She’s the one in danger.

A parallel to 5x8.

Cyranoid: I don't expect you to understand, but I am doing what is necessary to end this. To stop Reddington.

Garvey: I like to think I'm the kind of man who'd politely ask you to stop this, to let this end here, but I can tell you're the kind of guy who won't get the message and stop.

These bits sell Liz’s surrender should Ressler turn to Red.

Cyranoid: That's why I have a Cyranoid. To eliminate your control.

Cyranoid: You really think you have power over me, don't you?

Cyranoid: I am not surrendering myself to you.

Red: When you love someone, you have no control. That's what love is. Being powerless.

A parallel to Dr. Fulton.

Neville: Uh, it turns out that you're due for a reckoning.

Fulton: Closure requires a reckoning.

Because Red is Liz’s mother. So run this opposite.

Fulton: A widow. A mom. A cop. Liz: And one more thing. Fulton: What's that? Liz: A daughter.

A parallel to Ruin.

Blake: Try and get some sleep. Neville: I always try. And I never do.

Liz: What matters is that I did it and I was good at it. And I didn't lose any sleep over it. Red: You will. One of these nights you will. It's just a matter of when.

Summation.

They’ve covered most of my predictions for this season. Had I grouped these dialogues, you'd see it even more. With Neville, Liz pushes the danger to Agnes. With the task force, she pushes her second memory wipe and her possible surrender later on. A culmination of things for their first hit on my Tom Domino theory, and I do believe this very arc will lead to that reveal. Agnes’ hit is coming and everyone is falling in parallel with each other. They’ll have more coming, so expect a lot of parallel gif sets from me as they do.

Liz: I want revenge. Alice: You have my full attention.

Liz is seeking revenge for the death of the woman she believes was her mother. That's it. She's not seeking truths, but feeling quite certain Dom framed her mother and set her up as a patsy. Don't confuse a woman willing to break the rules to seek revenge as a woman who's in control of her life. There's no control to have in seeking revenge, only a poisoned soul. The difference between 3a and 8a shows you where they're heading. The only way Liz can gain control of her life is by getting to the truth rather than seeking revenge for what she believes is the truth. Once those truths come to light, Liz will have the power she needs to take control. Because she’s seeking revenge for what she believes is the truth, Agnes will end up in parallel with Red. Liz and Agnes willl basically fall on the other side of The Djinn's episode. She's harming her own daughter by aligning with Neville, and she was stupid enough to take Agnes on the run with her.

Consider Liz no different than Bahram because this is where they're heading.

Red: Look at that. Pinned like a swallowtail.

Red: I need an ambulance. A man's dying on a cross.

Ressler: So, you go ahead and you nail yourself to a cross...

You simply need to change Ressler's position from the Deer Hunter episode.

Ressler: Don't. Don't ask me to feel your pain, Liz. I got more than enough of my own.

Liz: But if she isn't who I thought she was, if she's a threat - Ressler: Then we'll deal with it.

Because Agnes is his daughter and he’s gonna feel that pain with her.

Bahram: I wanted to protect you, Nasim.

Tom: We were trying to protect Agnes. Red: I guess that didn't work out.

I’m predicting Neville runs opposite William with the ducks.

William: There's a park on the corner of Wabash and Grant. I take my granddaughter there to feed the ducks.

Duck, duck, roasted goose. Fire for Agnes. Burn scars like the makeup on the woman at the costume shop. Fire like Alina’s friend. Burns to the face like Mary Bremmer. I think that’s why they’re on the carousel with the unicorn. Unicorns are good luck. Washer necklaces are bad luck. I think he’s gonna drop a deadly weapon through Liz’s skylight on behalf of his sister.

#Rederina #Anti-Tom Keen #Anti-Keen2 #memory wipe theory #tom domino theory #Keenler baby theory

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i-contain-ineffability · 5 years

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Good Omens AU Idea

Concept: Good Omens but the Them is college aged bc everyone I know in college is jaded, angry, aged, and done with everything.

Pepper got a full ride and is studying political science, she wants to be Prime Minister some day

Brian is an Environmental Scientist or Engineer and wants to go into environmental clean up

Wensleydale is studying to be a Dietitian

Maybe Adam is studying archeology specializing in theology (idk how archeology majors work) or sociology specializing in religion (idk how sociology works as a major so if any archeologists or sociologists to be want to speak up about how this would actually work pls do, I'm curious now)

Dog is an emotional support animal and that’s how Adam can take him everywhere

Maybe in this AU Adam’s powers don’t manifest until he’s 21 after he gets Dog at age 11, or he was a late bloomer for his powers and Crowley and Aziraphale have to sell that lie to Heaven and Hell while they look for someone who is 11, 12, 13 etc all the way up to 21 with a Hell Hound, and Crowley has to come up with a sellable lie for the mess in the Middle East with Warlock, or he just goes on the run from Hell. Maybe Aziraphale tells Heaven the influences from the Light are working.

Agnes Nutter predicted this so Anathema isn’t running around for a decade trying to find the Antichrist

Weird crap still happens to Adam, but in the context of college

Like maybe he can eat dubious or suspect food and be fine (you know, the food that gets forgotten in the back of your fridge? the one you just toss out in the container because you don’t want to think about it? he can eat it and be fine)

Adam’s always on time when he’s stressed about arriving on time, even when he shouldn’t be on time, he puts it down to managing to run/drive/bike to catch the train/get to class/get to work/get to the interview on time

If he’s a late bloomer when he starts hearing voices and having weird crap happen to him he puts it down to finals week stress (I got lucky that time I ate 2 week old meatloaf, I've been hearing voices but I haven’t slept in 3 days so that’s fairly normal, Dog’s eyes are glowing red but I’ve had 6 Red Bulls today to I wouldn’t be surprised if he started talking bc I can hear colors right now)

Crowley: Haven’t you been hearing voices? Getting urges to cause mass destruction?

Adam: Well yeah, but I haven’t slept in 3 days and I’m fueled off of stress and coffee made with Red Bull instead of water so I’ve been hallucinating dog’s eyes glowing blue and losing a bunch of time, like yesterday I came home to all my homework done and I don’t remember doing any of it.

Crowley: THOSE AREN’T HALLUCINATIONS DOG’S A HELLHOUND AND THAT WAS YOUR POWERS MANIFESTING

Alternatively: he figured out he has powers and the only people he told were the Them. Crowley and Aziraphale are either on the run from Heaven and Hell while trying to find the Antichrist, or have to come up with increasingly ridiculous excuses/lies to buy themselves more time to find him. Until Adam walks into Aziraphale’s bookshop asking if he has xyz books for his thesis project or something.

In this one Adam purposefully uses his powers for small-scale stuff, like making the food forgotten at the back of his and the Them’s fridge safe to eat again, maybe slowing down time to get more study time for stuff (since in the book and show, at least the way I interpreted it, it’s kind of Adam’s friends that pull him back from being the Antichrist and to being human again), free tickets and things for movies and musicals etc

Crowley: what do you MEAN you decided to stop being the Antichrist?

Adam: well, I almost did, until I told my friends I could make them do whatever I wanted, and we were all so horrified by that statement that I stopped. also it’s difficult enough looking after myself and dog and my friends and coming up with things to do that ruling the world sounds like a nightmare

Anathema enrolls in the same college to try and track him down

If anyone writes this pleeeassee tell me

#the them #good omens #ineffable husbands #fix idea #fic idea

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fuckyeahgoodomens · 5 years

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Bits from the SFX Magazine:

23 September 2010 was a red letter day in the history of Good Omens (AKA The Nice And Accurate Prophecies Of Agnes Nutter, Witch, to give it its full title). After many years of trying to get the book made into a movie - most notably with Terry Gilliam at the helm - it was on this day, in a Cardiff restaurant, that Pratchett and Gaiman agreed that TV might be a better home for their story.

"The Terry Gilliam one should have happened," recalls Gaiman when we speak on a Cape Town soundstage. (SFX is happy to report he is clad in his trademark all-over black ensemble, despite it being the middle of the South African summer.) "They had a really good script. Johnny Depp was going to play Crowley and Robin Williams was going to play Aziraphale, Madame Tracy and Hastur. I think it was going to be a $65 million production and he got $50 million together from Europe. Then he went to America. I remember having dinner with him before he left and he said. 'All I have todo is get $15 million. You know, find which of the studios wants to sign on to have it: This is going to be a no-brainer...'

"[But] this was February 2002 - 9/11 had only just happened. He went around and said that it's a funny film about the end o the world, and people said, 'Go away,' and it died."

'"We had hopes that it would live again with Terry Gilliam," Gaiman goes on, "and he would've been our first choice to direct this. But Terry Gilliam was the person to say, 'You should do it as a TV series now.'"

Ultimately Gilliam wasn't keen on signing up for what would become six episodes. 400-plus pages of script and a 107-day shoot, but Pratchett and Gaiman's path was set. Even so, the TV landscape of 2010 was not like it is now. Game Of Thrones was still to make its debut and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon were yet to become major players in the TV market. The small screen was still playing second fiddle to cinema, and the ambitions of storytellers had to be somewhat smaller than they are now

...

Just think about all those fans who feel like they know stuffy bookshop owner Aziraphale and his not-quite-as-cool-as-he-thinks BFF Crowley better than anyone else - and feel any deviation from the pictures in their mind is an aberration.

"Good Omens absolutely belongs to the world," admits Gaiman. "Terry and I wrote a book that was 100,000 words, and that's probably not more than of the wordage of the total fan-fiction generated about these characters - even excluding the pornography. And think that's great. I love that. I’m pretty proud.

"When we started shooting. I did a post on Tumblr, and said. 'Look, your head canon is your head canon. Nobody's trying to fuck with that. We're not coming in and saying, "Our Crowley and Aziraphale is your Crowley and Aziraphale.” You can still have a platonic Hamlet in your head after seeing five different Hamlets, with thin Hamlets and fat Hamlets and black Hamlets and white Hamlets. Your Hamlet can still be your Hamlet.’ And that’s how I feel about Crowley and Aziraphale.

...

So what prompted an extremely succesful writer, with various big projects in the pipeline, to give up almost every other commitmentt for over a year, to devote himself to the major undertaking of running a TV show? It all goes back to that last request from his friend and an unsatisfying encounter with a Doctor.

"As a novelist - and even in comics - you get very used to the power of 'because I say so'. You're very used to writing a page and seeing it printed.

“I wrote two Doctor Who scripts. One ['The Doctor's Wife’] got every award possible, including a very nice one from SFX. One of them ['Nightmare In Silver'] is generally regarded as a dog. And the truth is, the scripts for both were on a par. The biggest difference between the first and the second was that they shot the first. And with the second there were some casting goofs, there were budget problems, there were directorial choices I wouldn't have made, there were cuts 1 wouldn't have made... They didn't really do what I asked them to do and I was in no position to get what I had made onto the screen.

"But I'm really glad that everything that went wrong with 'Nightmare In Silver' went wrong. Because it went wrong. I was like, 'It is a last request from a dying man that I will make this [Good Omens].’ Which means that I have to make it right. Which means that I need that power of 'because I say so'. I know before the camera hits it, it will be done. I'm here, and I'm making that happen."

#good omens #terry pratchett #neil gaiman #terry gilliam #doctor who #robin williams #johnny depp #I didn't know that Robin Williams was supposed to also play Hastur and Madame Tracy #sfx magazine #interview #fun fact #bts

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findasongblog · 5 years

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youtube

Find a #live song

Snow Patrol - Empress (Jahrhunderthalle Frankfurt, 08.02.2019)

Gig Review

Consulting my review of the last full band show I attended – Tennent’s Vital in 2013 – I found that at the time, Gary had promised a new album and tour for 2014... well, we all know that – and why – it didn’t happen. Seven years between Fallen Empires and Wildness and it’s not an exaggeration when I tell you I was downright scared before listening to the first new song last year – what if I didn’t like it? However, I fell in love with Don’t Give In instantly and Life On Earth is, imho, the best song Gary has ever written. Set the bar a bit high for the rest of the album, but there sure are a few more really good ones to be found on it. While Gary joked about taking as long for one album as The Beatles for their entire back catalogue, the fact that he still gets emotional when explaining how Life On Earth reconnected him to life and music shows that it wasn’t fun at all.

After being taken first to Tired Pony in London (2013) and then to Gary’s solo show at Christmas in Belfast (2015) by my dear friend Agnes, it was only fitting that I experienced my first show of the Wildness tour with her. Not everything went as planned, so we only arrived at the venue about 40 minutes before the doors opened. We still managed to get to the third row and right at the centre of the stage. I did spot some people in the crowd who, five years ago, had probably been too young to attend gigs, but those were few and far between. The vast majority were old fans – quite literally 😉

As our tickets stated the show would start at 8pm, we were prepared for a long wait inside and pleasantely surprised when JC Stewart started at 7.15 pm already. Like the second support act, Ryan McMullan, he’s a singer/songwriter from Northern Ireland. On an earlier leg of the tour, he had brought a band, but currently, it’s just him and his guitar / keyboard. You can check out his music on Spotify. Ryan also changed between playing guitar and keyboard. Close to the end of his set, something funny happened: someone in the audience started to clap rhythmically and Ryan said that distracted him because it was completely different from the rhythm of the song he wanted to play – which, for some reason, made even more people start to clap 😕 Instead of getting annoyed or trying to push through with his set list, Ryan said something like „You know what? Everyone just clap. I’ll try to go along with it.“ Which he did, first by improsvising a song about how he couldn’t come up with a song matching that rhythm, then playing a part of Walking In Memphis. The perfect reaction, very well done! Check his music out here.

After a break of a little over half an hour, it was time for Snow Patrol. Oh, how good to finally sing along again to old favorites and to the new songs for the first time! Run is always special when sung by the crowd and who doesn’t like the sing-along to Shut Your Eyes led by Gary? (well, I actually know people who don’t, but I’m not one of them 😉) But how come that there are no songs from Fallen Empires on the set list?? I’m happy we got Called Out In The Dark at least, though I wouldn’t have minded Dark Roman Wine or Set The Fire To The Third Bar either (these are played alternately at the gigs).

Alas, we didn’t get another one of my favorites either, i.e. You’re All I Have. The sound hadn’t exactly been great from the beginning and got worse. What If This Storm Ends was only bearable because of the stunning visuals. After Chasing Cars (which didn’t sound as bad), Gary announced that the soundboard had to be „rebooted“ and the band left the stage „as if it was the break before the encore“ – which it actually WAS, though a considerable part of the audience didn’t realise that and kept shouting for an encore later when the gig had definitely ended. The band didn’t let the technical issues bring them down – special shout out to Pablo and Jonny who played despite health problems.

As I said, the visuals saved What If... (damn, there are now two songs that start like this LOL), and they were great throughout the show, altering between video clips and the projection of band members (and sometimes the audience).

Gary was in good mood and form, hardly messing up any lyrics 😉 As usual, there was a lot of banter and interaction with the crowd. The sweetest thing was when Gary told the security to bring a woman who had fainted to the side of the stage so she could continue to watch the show from there. For the first track of the encore, and the second What If... 😜, Gary asked us to help him out with the high notes and I dare say we sounded pretty good.

It had been a long, and in Agnes’ case, hard day at work, and there was some ice cold wind blowing, so we decided to call it a day and not wait to see if the band came out (they did, as I’ve learned in the meantime). Going to save that for a warm summer night at the beautiful Neumünster Abbey in Luxembourg 😊

(my complete photo set can be found here)

#music #music blog #indie music #alternative music #gig review #Snow Patrol #Empress #JC Stewart #Ryan McMullan #Jahrhunderthalle #Frankfurt #Germany #08.02.2019 #indie #alternative #find a song

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the-adaa · 6 years

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“We Have to Question Everything We’re Doing” – Veteran Art Dealer Richard Solomon on Bringing Galleries Into the 21st Century

By Stephanie Strasnick

Photo by Carlin Mayer. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

“Some collectors want to put art on their walls, live with it, love it, and learn from it,” says Richard Solomon, President of Pace Prints. “Some collectors want to hang it, others want to put it in storage or send it to Delaware. There’s no bad reason for collecting art.” In his five decades at the helm of the famed publishing house and gallery, Solomon has encountered a diverse array of collectors and artists, and has gained invaluable insight into contemporary collecting practices and the ever-changing art market.

Though he attests he is “not much of a salesperson,” the industry veteran has achieved unmatched success in the prints and multiples business and has partnered with more than 150 artists from the 1960s to the present to produce their editions. Since opening their doors 50 years ago, the gallery has mounted hundreds of exhibitions and participated in numerous fairs, including The Art Show and Art Basel.

At the request of his friend, Pace Gallery’s founder Arne Glimcher, Solomon established Pace Editions Inc. in collaboration with Glimcher in 1968. Over the past 50 years, Pace Editions, now renamed Pace Prints, has published over 150 different artists including Chuck Close, Jean Dubuffet, Shepard Fairey, Helen Frankenthaler, Jenny Holzer, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Yoshitomo Nara, Louise Nevelson, Robert Ryman, and Pat Steir among others. In addition to print galleries on 57th Street and in Chelsea, Pace Prints has a printmaking facility in Manhattan and a papermaking print workshop in Brooklyn.

Helen Frankenthaler, Geisha, 2003, twenty-three color Ukiyo-e woodcut, printed from 15 woodblocks on Torinoko paper and mounted onto Fabriano, Classico paper. Edition of 50. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

We sat down with the Boston-born and New York-raised gallerist to discuss the challenges facing 21st-century dealers, the enduring appeal of prints and works on paper, and the curious path that led him from supermarket executive to New York City marketing executive to the reigning King of Prints.

When did you first become interested in visual art?

My mother was a very avid collector. When I was in my early teens, she started bringing me around to galleries and would give me sculptors’ drawings for presents.

Did you continue to learn about and collect art in your late teens and twenties?

At Harvard, I originally thought I’d be a History of Art major but I eventually became a Government major. After graduating college, I went directly to the Harvard Business School and then into the family’s supermarket business. One day my wife and I were walking down Newbury Street in Boston. We looked in the window of a gallery with the name Pace on it. We ended up buying the first thing that Arne Glimcher sold as a dealer.

What inspired you to go into the print business with him?

Arne and I became good friends. Five years after we met, I returned to New York to work as a marketing executive at Clairol. In 1968, Pace Editions, now known as Pace Prints, was started as a separate entity from the Gallery by Arne Glimcher, with me as a silent partner, to publish a work by Lucas Samaras. By 1970, Arne had decided that he wanted to go into print publishing in a serious manner and to establish a print gallery as well. He persuaded me to leave Clairol and develop his vision as the full-time president of Pace Editions Inc.

Arne’s concept was that the Pace Gallery needed the capacity to be responsive to every medium in which their artists wanted to create art. He basically said that to fully represent an artist, Pace should have the facilities to enable the artist do whatever they want. In those days—the 1960s—publishers like Multiples, ULAE and Gemini were working with artists with a variety of gallery allegiances. Arne thought that if Pace Gallery artists wanted to create editions, Pace should have an in-house capacity to facilitate it. He decided that the time was right to make a serious commitment by setting up a separate company as publishers of limited edition prints and multiples and a gallery devoted to prints. He recruited me to make it happen.

Yoshitomo Nara, Untitled, 2010, a series of ten Ukiyo-e woodcuts. Edition of 50. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

Was the transition from advertising to art dealing a difficult one?

I was apprehensive to make the move. I told Arne, “What do I know about this business?” He said, “You’ll learn.” And here we are, 50 years later, and I’m still learning.

One of the things I understood about myself at the time was that I was a people person with a relatively decent marketing mentality—but not a great salesperson.

If you didn’t feel your sales abilities were strong, how did you adapt?

I have pretty good eyes, a pretty good sense of quality, and I’ve been able to hire excellent people over the past 50 years—most of whom are still with us if they haven’t retired. Our ability to attract a really good staff has let us thrive. I think that’s been the secret. We have really talented printers and gallery personnel. The Pace Gallery in the early days, supplied all the artists, like Louise Nevelson, Chuck Close, Jean Dubuffet, and Agnes Martin. More recently, Jacob Lewis, in his thirties, has been identifying the talent. Our wonderfully creative printers have enabled us to realize diverse projects with artists in a variety of printmaking processes.

Louise Nevelson, Nightscape, 1975, black cast paper relief. Edition of 75. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

How did Pace Prints become the renowned print gallery that it is today?

In 1975, three important things happened: Chuck Close, Agnes Martin, and Jim Dine came to the Pace Gallery.

Why was that important? Jim Dine, in my opinion, is one of the great contemporary printmakers. He loves making prints, and it is part of his DNA. He was a major reason why we actually established an in-house printmaking workshop under the direction of Joe Wilfer, who came to us as a talented printer. Joe’s inventiveness was immediately recognized by Chuck Close—who became a major printmaker for us in collaboration with Joe.

As a result, by the end of the 1970s, we were making prints in our own facilities instead of outsourcing them as we did with a number of artists, including Alfred Jensen, Louise Nevelson, and Jean Dubuffet, during our initial years as publishers.

Jean Dubuffet, Faits Mémorables III, 1978, silkscreen. Edition of 70. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

Has it been a challenge keeping the business stable in recent years?

Today is a particularly difficult time to be in the art world, both for art dealers and print publishers. It’s a very different world than it was in the 20th century, and I think we’re all struggling to figure out how to best adapt our businesses to be as successful in the 21st century as we were in the 20th.

Our publishing activities reflect, by necessity, a more diverse group of artists compared to our initial dependence on artists represented by the Pace Gallery. Reaching out to a wider community of artists has had its pluses and minuses. It has been increasingly difficult to get artists committed to showing up at our workshops as artists today are constantly pressured by their galleries to produce unique works for exhibitions, or for the next art fair, or for one of their international affiliated galleries. To say that the artists we want to publish are over-committed is an understatement.

It has also been extremely difficult for print dealers and publishers to get access to art fairs, or preferential placements in them, and it is extremely costly to participate in exchange for a few days of exposure—but art fairs have become increasingly important channels of distribution. All of this has added dramatically to the challenges of operating successful businesses.

Pat Steir, Dragon Waterfall, 2001, four-color screenprint. Edition of 35. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

What have you been doing in response to all of these struggles?

We’ve been taking on younger artists, as well as those with greater international visibility. We’ve also been expanding the aesthetic range in our publishing. We are lessening our edition sizes, producing a greater percentage of mono-prints, developing creative approaches to printmaking, and trying to find new methods of distribution and promotion.

The bottom line, however, is that we—like all of my colleagues—have not really solved many of the new challenges that we continue to face.

What is one of the most significant changes you’ve seen in this business in the past decade?

The big change is art itself. Somewhere along the line, contemporary art has increasingly become a fiduciary instrument. Branding has become extremely important. When I was in the supermarket business, we all recognized the importance of brand identification. It is happening big time in today’s contemporary art world.

In the past, artists’ brands—reputations—were created by museum acquisitions and exhibitions. Today, their reputations are more frequently created by market manipulation and social media promotion. They are easier to establish and promote, and often created by forces outside of the art world. A recognizable artist’s brand has monetary, trade, and auction value, and collectors are very conscious of that.

Leonardo Drew, 37P, 2015, pigmented, printed and cast handmade paper. Edition of 1, unique. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

What changes are you making in your approach to publishing?

More and more, we’re moving away from asking our artists to consider making print editions and instead we are encouraging them to make mono-prints. In the current collecting climate, uniqueness is frequently more appealing to collectors than owning a work that has been produced in editions. There is often a considerable aesthetic benefit in that the artist’s hand is more apparent in a mono-print. Additionally, in many cases, it is more cost effective as it does not involve producing a number of editions higher than what ends up being sold.

We have recognized that as printers and publishers we need to become increasingly creative in developing new processes such as in our papermaking workshop and our use of technology and new materials. Our skills in this regard have resulted in projects that we might not have dreamed possible when we started our own workshops in the mid-1970s.

James Turrell, Suite from Aten Reign, 2014, aquatint etching. Edition of 30. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

Can you pinpoint one of the single biggest issues facing dealers in 2018, and how dealers might confront it?

Besides confronting the facts of the increasing costs of doing business, I think one of the biggest single problems we’re facing today is there is not a spirit of collaboration among dealers. I’m not saying it’s easy. I mean, how do we foster a collaborative environment in such a competitive one?

Possibly some form of consolidation—both national and international—will need to take place. It is happening in almost every industry. Globalization and the costs and pressures of doing business have resulted in the necessity for major structural changes within many industries. Maybe, it needs to happen in the art business in some form.

Shara Hughes, Tree on the Hill, 2018, monotype with oil-based ink. Courtesy Pace Prints, New York.

You seem very open to change and very proactive when it comes to altering your business model as needed. What would you say to veteran dealers who are reluctant to change?

Everybody needs to examine their objectives, think more about collaboration and how they can have a greater impact in their segment of the art world. How can we, as gallerists, get the collectors back into the galleries? We are all paying a very high price for our galleries. It is our number one challenge to increase the returns on our real estate investments.

As gallerists, we need to figure out how to effectively and efficiently attract artists and clients and increase our productivity in all areas of our business. Among the many challenges, figuring out how to compete with the auction houses and art fairs will require learning how to effectively use the Internet as a selling vehicle as well as for publicity and informational purposes.

As with everything else in the 21st century, we all need to reevaluate everything. Success in the past does not relate to success in the future. Much of what we thought we were doing right in the 20th century probably isn’t as applicable in the 21st. We do not have to reinvent ourselves, but we do have to continuously question what we’re doing.

#Gallery Chat #ADAA Galleries #Richard Solomon

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takadasaiko · 7 years

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Fathers (a Blacklist Father’s Day fic)

Summary: Three Father's Day Blacklist drabbles for our favourite Blacklist dads :)

FFN II AO3

Reddington

The decision had been last minute from what he understood. Constantin was out of town on business and Katarina had decided to travel down to United States to visit with her own father for the weekend. The fact that it was Father's Day may or may not have weighed on her decision, but it meant something to Reddington. Elizabeth was coming with her and it was the first Father's Day he would have a chance to spend with his daughter.

Dom had been the one to reach out to him, not Katarina, though she didn't look too surprised as he stepped out of the car, reaching back in for the large box in the back seat.

Lizzie nearly toppled head over heels as she spotted him and ran down her grandfather's porch steps for him, calling out the whole way. She was laughing, the sound bright, and he set the box down on the trunk so that his hands were free to scoop her up, spinning her as he did and hearing the giggle that followed. She flung her arms around his neck once he brought her in close. "Grandpa promised," she whispered in his ear.

"And here I am," Reddington answered, kissing her cheek and she giggled again.

"For me?" the little girl asked, pointing to the box with the big, pink bow on it.

"It is. Why don't we go up to the porch and you can open it?"

She squirmed and he put her down so that she could race ahead. Red grabbed the box and followed, offering his most charming smile to the toddler's mother who still stood at the top of the steps. "I don't remember inviting you," she told him cheekily.

"Is your husband here this weekend?"

"He's in France."

"Mm. Then I don't see the problem in spending Father's Day with Lizzie."

"Masha," she corrected quickly.

"That's what he named her." Reddington looked down as he felt a sharp tug at his pants leg and Lizzie had her fingers wrapped around the material with one hand and pointing at the box with another.

"Don't make promises that you don't intend to keep, Raymond," Dom chuckled from a few feet away. "And isn't she supposed to be getting you something today?"

Katarina shot her father an indignant glare and Reddington chuckled, setting the box down on the old wooden porch and watched Lizzie tear excitedly at the wrapping. It went flying, a gust of wind taking a stray piece off onto the gravel path below, and she pulled the box lid off to reveal the shiny wooden box beneath.

"What is it, little one?" Katarina asked as she bent to kneel with her, helping small hands pull the gift up so she could see it better.

"Open it, Lizzie," Reddington told her once it was set on the porch and she did as he told her, music playing as the gears turned and her entire face lit up. He smiled. "I spent the better part of the week restoring it. Do you like the song?"

"It's pretty," she answered, mesmerized by the gift.

Katarina stood, stepping closer to him and keeping her voice low. "You shouldn't be giving her things."

"Keep it here. Constantin will never know."

"Just like the rabbit? She won't go to sleep without it."

"It's good that your husband is away so often and oblivious when he's home then," Reddington answered with a small smirk and she rolled her eyes, turning back to watch the little girl who was opening and closing the lid over and over again, enthralled by the way the music turned on and off with it each time. Katarina's expression softened as she watched her and Reddington felt a warmth at the sight. He and Kat were complicated on their very best days, but out of all of that, they had somehow made this beautiful, perfect child together. She never would admit Lizzie was his, but he didn't need her to. He knew. He knew his little girl and he would always love her, even if he couldn't always be there with her. It made moments like these all the more special.

Howard

"You know he's been waiting an hour, don't you?"

Howard Hargrave looked up from the files he was going over, his wife leaning against the doorframe of the office. "I'll only be a few minutes more."

"Do you know how long an hour is to a four-year-old?"

He set his pen down and loosed a breath. "He still has a few weeks until he's four."

His wife gave him slow smile and nodded behind her. "Whatever you're working on can wait. You promised your son a sand castle."

A quick glance at the clock proved Scottie hadn't exaggerated the time and he stood without another word and moved to the front room where he found Christopher sitting on the floor playing with a little red sailboat. He stood there a moment, watching him.

Howard had heard friends talk about how quickly the years passed by, but in that moment he felt it. Hadn't it been months since has held him in the hospital? Weeks since he'd taken his first steps or said his first words? Not years. It didn't feel like years. Howard had thought he had been back in the office just a few minutes. His work was important, but if he wasn't careful, he'd lose track of what was even more important than that.

"You ready to go, kiddo?"

Chris looked up, those big blue eyes focused on him and they brightened suddenly. "You done?" he asked, leaping to his feet.

"Yep. What do you say we go build the biggest sandcastle we can muster?"

Those were the magic words. One small hand grabbed onto Howard's fingers, tugging him towards the door so fast that he barely had time to slip his feet into the flip flops by the door or to grab the bag that Scottie had already packed for them. Christopher was, apparently, more than ready to go with his swimsuit already on and dragging his father out the front door and down towards the beach.

Howard offered a wave to one of the neighbors as she laughed at the sight of an almost-four-year-old child dragging the CEO of a major company towards the waves like their lives depended on it. "Do you have a place already picked out?"

"Uh-huh," Christopher answered, still pulling closer and close to the water itself.

"Chris, if we get too close the waves are going to wash it away before we get it built."

He shook his head, dark bangs falling in his face. "The sand's stickier," he explained matter of factly and Howard found himself chuckling as Chris plopped down onto the sand and started in on their project. There was no doubt that focus was ever going to be an issue. For the next two hours Chris pushed and patted sand where it needed to go, chattering the whole way.

The sun was burning hot in the sky by the time they finished and Howard could see signs of red already showing across the bridge of Christopher's nose. The little boy didn't seem to mind, though, as he stood back and admired their work. "You did a good job, Chris," he praised, drawing a bright grin from him.

"We did," his son told him and turned, wrapping his arms around his legs in a tight hug. "Love you, Dad."

Howard stood there for a long moment, letting the moment stand still with him. He couldn't stop Christopher from growing up. He couldn't pin the moments down very long. He'd grow up faster than either of his parents liked. Soon he'd be in school, studying, off to college. Dating, getting married and maybe, someday, even having children of his own that he could build sandcastles with, but right then, in that moment, Howard had his three-almost-four-year-old little boy with him, and he was so very proud of the sandcastle that he'd built with his daddy. He scooped him up, holding onto him tight. "I love you too, Chris."

"Always?"

"Always."

Tom

Leave it to Raymond Reddington to keep an actual island paradise as his contingency plan. After Katarina's return, after the Cabal had been completely dismantled, and after he had finally felt like he had done everything within his power to keep his daughter and her daughter safe, he'd left what was left of his empire to Liz to do with it what she pleased. As far as the world knew, Reddington was gone. Most presumed dead, and that seemed perfectly fine to the former Concierge of Crime. With Tom stepping into a leadership position at Halcyon they had the jet at their disposal to come see him whenever they wanted and while it was always an adventure putting the in laws together, everyone had wanted to take a breath from the craziness that was their lives and the trip had been planned for a long Father's Day weekend.

Tom had thought that maybe he'd get to see more of his own daughter than he actually had.

He had been gone for just over two weeks with Halcyon and had gotten home just long enough to pack a new bag and jump on the jet again with his family. He'd barely had a moment to kiss his wife and daughter, so it wasn't until they had gotten onto the plane that he realized just how put out Agnes really was with him. Every time he tried to reach out to her she had been intent on focusing her attention on anyone but him. The four-year-old little girl never slept a great deal on planes, even on long flights like this one, but she spent the whole time bouncing between Liz and either of her two grandparents. She would hop from one lap to the next, playing games, and had even managed to get Scottie to sing a song with her at one point, but the moment that her father reached out for her she huffed loudly and moved to find someone else. If she was angry at him for being gone, she'd found the best way to make him suffer for it.

They had landed and she'd dozed on the car drive out to the house, but had perked up immediately when they had stopped, all but piling out over her grandfather and racing to greet the other one, happily chattering with him as he had taken his fedora off and plopped it on her fair hair, pulling a giggle from her as he had carried her inside to where Katarina was waiting. She didn't stay awake long, barely making it through dinner before she'd fallen asleep and Tom had taken a moment when she was too sleepy to squirm away to carry her back into the room that Reddington had set aside just for his only granddaughter. He had kissed her goodnight and received a sleepy mumble, but he couldn't shake the feeling of disappointment that settled over him. He'd missed her. It had been some time since he'd been gone that long and apparently she was reacting badly over it.

Sometime in the night Tom woke to the bed shifting strangely. It took half a moment for him to place his surroundings and he glanced over to see Liz was still sound to sleep, curled up on her side with her dark hair pulled back and out of her face. She didn't look like she'd moved all night.

When he turned back he found was suddenly face-to-face with a large set of blue eyes. "Daddy, I wanna go to the beach," Agnes told him in a loud whisper as she crawled to sit on top of him.

Liz shifted in the bed next to them, but didn't quite wake up and Tom blinked up at his little girl, now perched on his ribs and looking at him expectedly. "Baby girl it's -" he managed to glance over at the clock next to the bed - "barely five in the morning. Don't you want to wait until after breakfast?"

"Everyone else'll be up. I wanna go with you."

"Can't argue with that logic," he teased. "Go get your towel and put your bathing suit on. I'll meet you at the door, okay?"

Her expression lit up and she nodded. "Okay."

She was gone just as quickly as she'd come and Tom was halfway to sitting up when his wife reached over, swatting at him sleepily. "Pushover," she mumbled.

"Yeah, well," he chuckled and saw a hint of her smile and she turned over and buried her face in the pillow, probably already asleep. He shook his head and slipped out from under the sheets, padding over to change into a pair of swim trunks and a different t-shirt.

Agnes was waiting on him by the time he got out there, hopping and tugging his boat shoes on one foot at a time, and he put his finger to his lips to signal that they needed to be quiet so that they didn't wake everyone else up. She mimicked the motioned before reaching up for him expectedly and he knew exactly what she wanted. He scooped her up, spinning her around so that she could sit on his shoulders before bending down to grab her discarded towel and bucket.

No one else was stirring yet, so the sound of the generator was the loudest sound either of them could hear outside the house. It faded behind them as they moved towards the beach, Agnes perched up on her daddy's shoulders so that she could see everything around them, and his shoes crunching softly against the sand.

"Daddy, I can see the moon," Agnes told him, her hand drumming on the top of his head so that he'd look where she was pointing.

"Yeah. A few stars are still up too. See?" he asked he heard her make a small sound of excitement before she folded her arms against his head and he laughed. "Don't you dare go to sleep up there."

"Nuhuh. I wanna see the birds. The big white ones. There!" She started to squirm as she spotted the large white birds that were convening on the sand and he knelt down so she wouldn't fall. Agnes slipped down his back and took off after them.

"Not too close to the water," he warned, but he couldn't keep the smile from his face as his daughter's laugh filled the early morning air as the birds scattered in all directions as she ran towards them. She did her best to copy the sounds they made, but it came out more as a giggle and she fell backwards into the sand.

Tom kept his pace just a little slower as he approached. This was the one place where they could relax just a little. No one was going to snatch her up here if she got beyond his reach. "They ran away huh?"

"It's their game," she told him very certainly and sat up, dusting the sand off her arms.

"So does this mean you forgive me, kiddo?"

She looked up at him, her little face screwing up thoughtfully before breaking out into a full grin. "Yeah," she said after a moment, the word drawn out. "I missed you, Daddy."

"I always miss you," he told her as he took a seat next to her.

"And Mama?"

"And your mama," he agree and offered her a small wink.

"Can I go with you next time you have to go away?"

"Maybe. It depends on why I'm going."

"You catch lots of bad guys like Mama does?"

"I try. She's really good at it though. I don't think anyone's as good as your mom is."

Agnes nodded, her blue gaze shifting to watch the waves and she loosed a breath in a long huff as she leaned over. Tom shifted and wrapped an arm around her and she snuggled in. "Promise to always come home?" she asked, her voice sounding sleepy.

"I will always come home to you, Agnes. I promise."

"'Kay."

She was asleep against him just a minute later, her breathing evening out and Tom didn't dare move. Instead he looked out over the ocean where the sun was just starting to peek up over the horizon and held her close as the sound of the waves and his daughter sleeping against him left him with a deep sense of peace that he never wanted to let go of.

Notes: Happy Father's Day everyone! I hope you enjoyed the overload of Blacklist family feels :D

#the blacklist #the blacklist redemption #Raymond Reddington #Elizabeth Keen #Howard Hargrave #Tom Keen #Agnes Keen #fanfiction #Father's Day

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njawaidofficial · 6 years

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A Netflix Movie Doesn’t Need To Be Good — It Just Needs To Be There

https://styleveryday.com/2018/02/08/a-netflix-movie-doesnt-need-to-be-good-it-just-needs-to-be-there/

A Netflix Movie Doesn’t Need To Be Good — It Just Needs To Be There

John Ortiz, David Oyelowo, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in The Cloverfield Paradox.

Scott Garfield / Netflix

The trouble with saying that Netflix “pulled a Lemonade” when it announced the unexpected premiere of The Cloverfield Paradox after the Super Bowl this past weekend is that The Cloverfield Paradox is nothing at all like Lemonade. Invoking Beyoncé — she who has made the no-advance-notice album drop such a part of her brand over the last few years — has become a useful shorthand for describing any sort of major release, music or otherwise, that skips the standard marketing ramp-up in favor of a digital-age offering directly to consumers (and I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone).

But in the case of the third Cloverfield movie, making this comparison feels like it’s letting Netflix get away with what was really a masterful act of turd polishing. Fans turn out for Beyoncé’s albums without early promo because they expect them to be that good; they mobilize because of how invested they are in her an artist. On Super Bowl Sunday, Netflix was doing the opposite of mobilizing — it was counting on inertia, on being able to persuade subscribers who were already on the couch in front of the television that they might as well stay there for another 100 minutes or so.

To put it another way: Lemonade would be a great parallel to The Cloverfield Paradox if, after the recording of Lemonade, Columbia Records had been so dismayed by the results that it deemed the album unreleasable, and then Spotify came around and offered to take it off its hands for more than it cost to make — enough for the record company to walk away having made some kind of profit. That’s pretty much what happened to the third installment of the J.J. Abrams–produced, loosely linked Cloverfield series. The movie was slated for a theatrical release from Paramount in April, until execs decided it wasn’t worth sinking more money into marketing the troubled production, when it probably wasn’t going to make any back in ticket sales.

Netflix was just advertising that it had the movie, period. Whether it was good or bad was incidental — what mattered was that it was there.

Traditionally, studios dump movies like these, giving them their contractually obligated run in theaters while trying to minimize the attention paid to and the advertising dollars spent on them. But instead of just taking the L, Paramount was able to offload it to Netflix, which is still working on making a name for itself as a platform for original movies, and ready to spend for a name-brand movie, dud or not. The streaming service bought the movie only to turn around almost immediately after and offer it to audiences with its Super Bowl stunt. What Netflix was touting with the 30-second spot that played during the game wasn’t that it had this movie and it was good — half the footage was from the original Cloverfield. Netflix was just advertising that it had the movie, period. Whether it was good or bad was incidental — what mattered was that it was there.

Netflix didn’t produce The Cloverfield Paradox, which is set on a space station where an international crew experiments with a particle accelerator in an attempt to solve a global energy crisis. But in some ways the movie — a sci-fi flick with a terrific cast, a terrible script that’s cobbled together from borrowed fragments of better films, and some clumsily shoehorned-in connections to existing intellectual property — couldn’t have been a more natural fit for the company’s oeuvre.

It’s comprised of enough elements that seem worth your time (promising franchise, popular genre, a POC-heavy ensemble filled with rising stars like Gugu Mbatha-Raw) that the fact that the film itself is not actually worth your time doesn’t seem to matter. At least not to Netflix, which touted this new movie as an answer-filled prequel to the first Cloverfield in a way that made you wonder how closely anyone there had watched it. Negative word of mouth might have tanked The Cloverfield Paradox in theaters over its opening weekend, but in the frictionless world of streaming, the fact that you would have felt cheated if you’d paid money to see it no longer applies. You’ve already paid for it, with your subscription fee. You might as well watch.

The film industry has been fretting for over a decade now about how digital availability is going to change everything — how people no longer want to bother with going out to theaters when there’s so much to stream, how TV is eclipsing movies, how the general wealth of entertainment options at home has eroded the big-screen audience. And while that’s all true, to some extent, we’ve talked much less about the way that shift — from actively choosing something to go out to see to making do with what’s available — will affect what gets produced, and how.

The Cloverfield Paradox

Netflix

Having to buy a ticket puts pressure on an individual movie to make all that effort and expenditure worth the while (well, unless you have a MoviePass, but let’s see how sustainable that proves to be). Picking something to stream requires none of the same exertion or commitment — and you can stop halfway through, jump to something else, toodle around on your phone during the slower bits. For most people who pony up each month, a subscription fee isn’t paying for access to any particular title, but to the idea of a library. It’s all just convenient content.

There’s been a gradual rise of “Netflix” as a verb, rather than a proper noun — synonymous with “curling up in front of a screen to watch something.” Which is a testament to the brand’s dominance (in 2015, it was reported that the company was responsible for over a third of peak-hour internet bandwidth usage) but also to how people have started to treat whatever is on the service as what’s available to watch. There are still sporadic bursts of stories about purges on the service as deals expire and licensing lapses and titles come and go, though media outlets don’t follow those updates as breathlessly as they used to (maybe because it’s harder to tell what’s leaving).

Netflix represents, for a lot of people, the practical limit of what there is to watch at any particular moment.

Those titles don’t blink out of existence — they go to other streaming sites, or cable channels, or are available to rent, or are out there on DVD (remember DVDs?). That they’re mourned as if they’ve been lost to humanity speaks to how much what’s on Netflix represents, for a lot of people, the practical limit of what there is to watch at any particular moment.

The spread of streaming has led to this fascinating tendency to treat Netflix as a populist hero. Filmmaker Ava DuVernay, while making it clear she hadn’t seen The Cloverfield Paradox yet, threw her support behind the friends and fellow filmmakers of color involved in making it in a tweet on Sunday, in which she noted, “No advance press, ads, trailer. Straight to the people. Gamechanger.”

At the Cannes Film Festival last year, jury members Pedro Almodóvar and Will Smith battled each other over streaming versus theatrical. The Spanish director spoke of his aversion to giving one of cinema’s most respected prizes to a movie, like Netflix entries The Meyerowitz Stories and Okja, that wasn’t destined to be seen by most audiences on the big screen. Smith, who was starring in a Netflix project, Bright, lined up for later that year, argued on behalf of streaming; he insisted his children still also go to the theater, and that they “watch films they otherwise wouldn’t have seen. It has broadened my children’s global cinematic comprehension.”

Will Smith, Agnes Jaoui, and Pedro Almodóvar at Cannes in May 2017.

Getty Images

Cinema-going for the artistic elite vs. streaming for the regular folks isn’t a binary that matches reality — all those snobs out there, making Marvel movies into global hits! — but it speaks to changes in viewing habits that film industries the world over continue to resist. The traditional structures are crumbling, new ones have to be figured out, and couples and friends all over the world are asking each other, “What do you want to Netflix tonight?”

Netflix has, so far, had a much better handle on making original series than making original films, because shows make sense with a subscription mindset — they’re things you should want to binge, and that should make you want to stick around for new seasons. But who knows exactly what subscription-worthy movies should be like? Not Netflix, whose feature ventures have ranged all over the place, from purchasing the Oscar-nominated Mudbound at Sundance to signing an eight-picture deal with Adam Sandler, from sinking $125 million into Martin Scorsese’s upcoming The Irishman to spending $90 million on Bright, its heavily-promoted attempt at the streaming equivalent of a blockbuster.

Obvious attempts to win awards aside, the service seems to be moving toward the strategy that led to the latter film. Bright is an algorithm-friendly concoction poised to catch viewers, in much the same way as The Cloverfield Paradox, who might stumble upon it from various directions. Directed by Suicide Squad‘s David Ayer, the movie straddles two popular genres, buddy cop and fantasy; it features an A-list star; it’s the start of a franchise; and it has a terrible script that makes gestures toward edgy relevance (“Fairy lives don’t matter today!”) without actually having anything to say.

Will Smith and Joel Edgerton in Bright

Matt Kennedy / Netflix

“The critics are pretty disconnected from the mass appeal,” Netflix CEO Reed Hasting said on an investor call when talking about the gap between the critical drubbing the movie received and the huge success the company claimed it had with viewers. What that success entails is unclear, since Netflix doesn’t make its data public, and so, unlike studios, doesn’t have the world totaling up its box office wins and losses. But it’s also hard to imagine Bright would have made any major headway in theaters, that it would have had much luck prying people out of the grooves in their sofa cushions.

It didn’t need to. The bar is so much lower with Netflix, the ease so much greater, when something is already there and all you have to do is hit play. With the company slated to release around 80 original movies this year, it’s staking out its own good-enough alternate movie universe, where a title that would probably have been a flop in theaters can be turned around and repositioned as a win for streaming. Who knows if it really was a win, or what that even means for Netflix, but it definitely got the company attention. It united large swaths of the country in watching one mess of a movie, for a mere $50 million. And while this latest addition to Netflix’s firehose of content won’t necessarily speed up the demise of theatrical releases, it’s a reminder of just how powerful a force convenience is. In this brave new world, a film that wouldn’t have been good enough to put on pants and venture outside for might be the perfect thing for a lazy Sunday night. ●

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chwpromoblog · 6 years

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CRISTIANO DE LA RENTA. college sophomore; nineteen. xavier serrano. OPEN.

and, as christian stovitz once said:

"Thanks, man. You got my mark."

BEFORE THE PARTY;

Cristiano De La Renta was first and foremost a legend. He was infamous figure amongst fashion crowd and why was that? For starters, he was the heir to the De La Renta label, a world renowned fashion house known for it’s breezy Spanish flare and immaculate tailoring. It was a shocking revelation to the fashion world, this massive label had been left in the hands of a nineteen year old kids. While that turn of events would have been enough to make him a big name in fashion, it was the lavish lifestyle that he lived that kept his name on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Everything Cristiano did was in excess. From the extravagant blow outs to the group trips to the destinations that hosted the after party to the monthly trips to the most stunning vacation destinations, Cristiano was the culmination of a kid who had far too much money and far too little rules and discipline.

He had been left to his own devices for a large majority of his life. His parents having either been too busy being the best at their respective careers or they were getting busy with their respective homewreckers. His mother and father didn’t clear too much time in their schedules to take care of their baby boy, so they left him in the care of au pair after au pair. They eventually caught onto what the other had been doing behind their back, so a television worthy messy divorce proceeding followed suit. Both of his parents accused the other of being the original unfaithful party, so began the untangling of their twisted web which left Cristiano that much more neglected. It came to a point where Cristiano only ever saw his parents if it was in the company of one of their lawyers, attempting to get some dirt out of him.

But someone had decided to step up in their absence. His grandfather, Oscar.

Cristiano would only ever speak highly of the man. Despite running a fashion empire, he had genuine interest in his grandsons life. He took time to be a part of his life; teaching him the tricks of the trades, helping him with his homework in his own eccentric way, being there for each and every one of his achievements. No matter how big or how small. His grandfather was a constant reminder that someone did in fact care for him, he was loved. Someone remembered that he was a human, not just some pawn in a hopeful legal win. But unfortunately, those moments would soon themselves cut short when his grandfather passed away. It had been expected, he’d been suffering with Alzheimer's for quite some time but Cristiano just wanted more time with the man. He would have given anything for that, even the massive inheritance that had been left solely to him. Anything

But life didn’t work that way, no matter how much money you had.

The loss of his grandfather triggered something inside of Cristiano. He didn’t need his family's love and approval, why attempt to get theirs when he could make everyone else love him? His change in him began with the way he dressed, as soon as he was able to work off his baby weight- his closet consisted of shorts, sheers and Versace. Just about anything that emphasised his newfound body.

After the weight loss and closet reinvention came the praise. Given the obvious changes to his image, he began to attract the attention of the fashion world. They had been all but ready to take him on as their next it boy and Cristiano relished the attention.

Attention that began to pull his focus away from his academics. But how was he possibly expected to sit in some classroom learning about Earth Science when he had booked editorial spreads for Vogue or GQ? He couldn’t. But his attendance wasn’t the only problem that the board at his former school, St. Agnes had with the boy. He was a bad example, that’s what he was often told. He must have forgotten when he signed on to be some sort of role model? Plus, he wasn’t the one that asked to be photographed stumbling out of Up N’ Down. Maybe these were things they should have brought up with the celebrity obsessed culture they lived in. But he would take full responsibility for having boxes of champagne delivered to the school’s front steps. That was all him. The stunt hadn’t been received by the board so he had been expelled from the school. To most, that would have been seen as shameful but not amongst the private school circuit. Not only was he fashion’s newest shining star, but was he a legend to those in Rosewood.

Yet his parents didn’t bat an eyelash at his behavior. Rather than scold him, his parents blamed the other for the person he was becoming. Instead of it bringing them together in the vein of some cheesy after school special, it simply gave them more ammo in their war against each other.

But there was one person who had shown concern about his well being. Chanel Horowitz. They came into each other’s lives when they both needed each other the most. Cristiano needed someone to care about him, given he was quickly spiraling out of control and Chanel had wanted someone to show her love and affection. He had that and then some for the girl, so things led to them eventually dating. They had dated for quite some time actually, but Cristiano found his eyes wandering every so often. He had needs after all and given Chanel strict no sexual contact rule, he found himself getting it from the secretary at his father’s lawyers firm, the sales women at Barney’s, and several members of the Lacrosse team. Their relationship having came to an end because she had been caught in the act with Phillip Dyun— in his defense, nothing turned him on more than a man that knew fashion. He understood that he hurt Chanel deeply, but he intended on making it up to her somehow.

The love that they had once shared had been what saved him. After every bender, after every fuck up... it’d been her that had been by his side. So Cristiano made a vow to himself, he was going to be a better person for Chanel. Well a somewhat better person.

What? A gentleman needed to divulge into his fair share of debauchery from time to time.

DURING THE PARTY;

Cristiano had been behaving himself at the party. Mostly because he’d invited one of his favorite photographers to be his date to it. Not his actual date, the man was unfortunately very heterosexual but no matter— he was giving the man exactly what he wanted. The perfect shots for his upcoming tablebook. He was putting together a collection of teenage rambunctiousness and from what he could see, this party was that and then some.

He loved it.

Cristiano continued to lead him through the party before he caught sight of Chanel. A vision of perfection, as she always was. Did she ever have an off day? No. That was just one of the many reasons why he adored his ex girlfriend. And given he still had plenty to make up for, a lightbulb went off in his head. What better way to make her happy than to have her beauty shown off to the masses? Sure she could get a spread in the man’s publication. While nothing about Chanel screamed madness nor secret angst, she was what every teenage wanted one way or another. Whether it was looking like her or wanting to be with her.

So Cristiano introduced the pair, letting his friend know that he would keep an eye on her little project Taissa for the evening. It was the least he could do for her. He might not be getting the spread, but he’ll be the one walking the shows at Milan fashion week so it all evened out. Cristiano turned his attention back to where Taissa had been, only to find her gone.

She’d just been there. That goofball Tate having been right by her side. His eyes wandered until they caught Phillip Dyun’s. A smirk found itself on his lips as the guy motioned him to come over.

Sure, he’d promised Chanel that he’d keep an eye on Taissa but last he saw, she was with Tate and the guy was harmless. That was the universe letting him know that it was time for him to enjoy himself.

alternate faceclaims and prompts.

#rp #rpg #roleplay #active rp #town rp

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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WandaVision Episode 6 Theories Explained

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains spoilers for WandaVision and the wider MCU

It’s that time of the week where we’ve had a few days to digest the latest episode of WandaVision, so it’s time to drag out our diminishing ball of red yarn and start connecting theories about what’s really going on at the core of the show’s story.

In Episode 6, ‘All-New Halloween Spooktacular!’, there were more Marvel Easter eggs than ever flying around. We also got to spend some quality time with Wanda’s new family, including Evan Peters’ integration as the MCU’s long-dead Pietro Maximoff. Hard to argue that Uncle Pete’s energy was absolutely intoxicating, but it occasionally verged on disturbing, which only served to whip up WandaVision’s fans into a finger-pointing frenzy as to the true nature of Peters’ role in the Disney+ event series.

Let’s take a look at the most compelling WandaVision theories gaining traction on message boards and social media since we last saw the show’s worst villain – the end credits.

Wicked Little Town

Here’s a devastating little theory doing the rounds: what if there were no children in Westview until the sudden manifestation of a younger population in Episode 6 because something terrible happened to the real children of Westview after The Snap? It’s mathematically improbable (but not impossible) that if most of the adults in the town disappeared at once, they could leave their children behind with no one to care for them.

The theory balances on the notion that either some horrible accident occurred while the kids were fending for themselves, or that a dark entity pounced on them. Wanda could conceivably consider Westview a perfect place to create a protective bubble around; somewhere that they could all ‘forget’ about their grief and loss together.

Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, these people are still in pain – whatever is keeping Wanda suspended in a state of ignorant bliss isn’t without side effects for the residents of Westview. However, if there were some ‘agreement’ with the town’s council to go along with Wanda’s plan in an effort to bring the children back to life or pry them from the grip of a nefarious villain, perhaps the grownups of Westview might expect to see their families eventually return – if they just play along.

Every night… from WANDAVISION

Pinches of Paprika Out of Ten: 8

The Red Note

A theory flourishing on Reddit via DrewAutote presents an interesting observation about WandaVision’s theme songs to date. They note that each episode’s opening theme utilizes tritones, which apparently aren’t particularly popular in modern music.

From the early 18th century/late Middle Ages the Latin phrase ‘diabolus in musica’ or ‘the Devil in music’ was applied to the harsh-sounding tritone interval, which is “essentially one half-step away from a perfect fifth”. The theory posits that their continued use in WandaVision’s catchy themes could be “hinting at a darker entity pulling the strings.”

Gonna be real with you here: we do not know nearly enough about musical composition to lend any weight to this intriguing theory, but if the creators of WandaVision have gone that deep to slyly introduce notorious Marvel Comics villain Mephisto into the MCU – and a big chunk of fans are now dead certain that’s happening – fair play to them.

Pinches of Paprika Out of Ten: 8

Might As Well Jump

Is The Hex a newly created ‘jump point’ that allows someone or something easy access to Earth? Hmm, a better question to start with is “hang on, what even is a ‘jump point’?”

Well, as we’ve seen in several Marvel blockbusters to date – most prominently in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 – jump points are fissures in space which allow spaceships to use the MCU’s interdimensional travel system – the ‘Universal Neural Teleportation Network’. You can hop near instantaneously to other areas in space by accessing one of these jump points. Oh, and they look exactly like a hexagonal field, much like the dome that surrounds Westview.

If Wanda and whoever else is behind the strange goings on in Westview fabricated a mystical fissure in the town to make it happen, it might have not just produced a new jump point in space or time, but a dangerous multiversal doorway – which could explain both the sudden arrival of Evan Peters’ version of Quicksilver and WandaVision’s connection to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Pinches of Paprika Out of Ten: 5

The New Avengers

When will we get another Avengers film? Cap’s old, Black Widow and Iron Man are dead, and Thor’s gone off with the Guardians. There aren’t too many active Avengers left, and those who are still around feel pretty scattered and unconnected in a post-Snap world. But perhaps Marvel is setting up a new, younger band of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and Wanda’s twins Billy and Tommy could be a part of that plan.

With Billy and Tommy having mystical powers and super speed much like their comics counterparts Wiccan and Speed, Clint Barton handing his bow and arrow to Kate Bishop in Marvel’s Hawkeye series, Ms Marvel on the horizon, Cassie Lang aging up to have a much bigger role in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Iron Man’s legacy extending out to a Riri Williams Ironheart project, there’s a new breed of superheroes waiting in the wings to take over from the old guard.

Is it possible that when WandaVision is over, a teenaged Billy and Tommy will survive to tell the tale and we’ll see a gang of new Avengers start to take shape?

RED & BLUE #WANDAVISION pic.twitter.com/ga7xeVmojw

— Nação Marvel 🎃 (@NacaoMarvell) February 14, 2021

Pinches of Paprika Out of Ten: 3

Mepietro

Plenty of WandaVision fans have committed to the theory that Mephisto is behind the creation of Westview, or that he helped Wanda do it. For those who couldn’t pick the diabolical demon out of a line-up, Mephisto was inspired by Mephistopheles of the Faust legend and is basically Marvel’s version of The Devil. He also looks similar to a traditional artist’s impression of Satan.

The villain was originally brought to life by Stan Lee and John Buscema in The Silver Surfer #3, and since the first batch of episodes arrived, most of WandaVision’s regular characters have been accused of being Mephisto at one time or another, including those we’ve already met like Dottie and Herb (where the Hell is Dottie??) and those we haven’t even clapped eyes on, like Agnes’ problematic husband Ralph.

But since Episode 6 started streaming, Pietro has naturally become the focus of many Mephisto theories. Let’s face it, he’s sus, and there are certainly reasons to believe he’s different from everyone else who’s found themselves playing a new role in Wanda’s upbeat reality.

For a start, he’s very aware of what’s going on. Turning up unexpectedly wearing a semi-familiar guise at a moment of conflict that may have pushed Wanda and Vision to break down the walls between them, he goes onto be very direct with Wanda, asking her how she created The Hex and condoning her behavior while trying to gain her trust. He’s also casually cruel, dismissing Vision’s loss with “it’s not like your dead husband could die twice”.

Not only that, he calls Billy and Tommy “demon spawn” and tells them to raise Hell. Mephisto’s relationship to Wanda’s twins is somewhat complex in the comics, but they were essentially magical constructs created by Wanda using slivers of Mephisto’s life essence, and they ceased to exist when they were reabsorbed by Mephisto. They were also reincarnated later on, but that’s a whole other deal.

Arguably, it’s a great time in the MCU’s evolution to introduce a major new villain now that Thanos is dust in the wind, and since so many of both the surviving and upcoming MCU superheroes have lore with Mephisto in the comics, there are plenty of resources to pull from if he’s set to be a huge antagonist.

But did Mephisto really offer Wanda a Faustian bargain before Westview took shape? She gets some happy family time with Vision in Westview, and he gets …well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? Two new superpowered beings at his disposal? Maybe. The opportunity to drain Wanda’s still somewhat unexplored mystical power? Mayyybe.

Is Evan Peters’ version of Pietro really Mephisto? Perhaps, sure. At this point we’d suggest those who don’t think Peters has the range to play a massive Marvel villain go watch him play eleven different roles effortlessly in American Horror Story, then get back to us.

Only time will tell, eh? Three episodes to go!

Pinches of Paprika Out of Ten: 2

Have you heard any reasonable new theories about where WandaVision will end up since Episode 6 dropped? Let us know in the comments.

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The post WandaVision Episode 6 Theories Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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caveartfair · 7 years

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Do Women Dealers Represent More Women Artists? We Crunched the Numbers

What would the world look like if more women were in charge?

An Artsy analysis comparing the artist rosters of the 199 female-run and male-run galleries showing at the 16th edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach provides one clue. Dealers who are women are 28% more likely to show artists who are women.

The gender breakdown of artists listed on the websites of the 126 male-run galleries showing at Art Basel in Miami Beach is 75% male artists to 25% female artists, a ratio of three to one. Female-run galleries show 66% male artists and 34% female artists, a ratio of two to one. The overall share is 72% male and 28% female artists. (See below for a full description of the methodology.)

Dealers rarely, if ever, cite gender (or ethnicity, or nationality, or any other marker of identity) as a factor in deciding to represent an artist. That notion is almost universally rejected; it’s always and inevitably about “the strength of the work.” But the findings of this analysis lend some credence to the aphorism, sometimes attributed to female leadership expert Laura Liswood, that “There’s no such thing as a glass ceiling, just a thick layer of men.”

The larger the number of artists in a gallery’s stable, the less likely female artists are to be represented (and the less likely it is that the dealer herself is female). And at every size, women dealers represent more female artists than their male counterparts. The 14 male-run galleries with over 50 artists represent just 15% female artists, while the six female-run galleries of over 50 artists showed 25% women. At the smaller end, the 16 male-run galleries participating in Art Basel with 15 or fewer artists had 31% female artists on their roster; the seven female-run galleries of the same size had 39% female artists.

London dealer Pilar Corrias said those figures made sense, since mega-galleries of that size are dealing with artists at the very top end of the market, who tend to still be largely male.

“When you get to the $10 million, $20 million levels, that’s where the disparity comes…when that amount of money is at stake, politics go out the window,” she said.

Among all the galleries in the analysis, the share of their artists who are women ranged from zero to two-thirds. Of the five galleries who represented exclusively artists who are men, four (including two dealers whose rosters boast 49 and 86 artists, respectively) are run by men. These galleries tend to specialize in earlier art-historical periods when all opportunities for women, not just in art, were far more restricted.

As the late art historian and scholar Linda Nochlin described it in her famous 1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”: “[I]n actuality, as we all know, things as they are and as they have been, in the arts as in a hundred other areas, are stultifying, oppressive, and discouraging to all those, women among them, who did not have the good fortune to be born white, preferably middle class and, above all, male.”

But what’s the excuse for contemporary dealers, when, for example, women in the U.S. (still the largest art market in the world, per UBS and Art Basel’s The Art Market | 2017) are far more likely than men to graduate with arts degrees at the undergraduate and graduate level, according to data from the U.S. Education Department?

“A lot of women artists get lost along the way.”

Corrias, whose gallery turns 10 years old next year, said part of the problem was structural, in that the crucial stage for an artist’s career tends to coincide with the time when women have children.

“Artists tend to start becoming successful in their late twenties and thirties, and it’s also the time when women have children,” Corrias said. “It’s very hard if you’re a young artist who’s beginning to make a way for yourself to then suddenly get pregnant and have to deal with childcare. It’s all about money, really, and whether you can afford the childcare or not. So that’s why a lot of women artists get lost along the way.” She noted that female dealers also tend to open their galleries in their thirties and forties, once the most demanding years of childrearing are behind them.

(Interestingly, one study found that female artists don’t tend to experience the wage loss upon motherhood, relative to men, that is a major factor of the overall gender pay gap and has been called by sociologist Michelle Budig calls “the motherhood penalty.” That said, women working in the arts still earn less than men, according to research from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project at Indiana University.)

“Being an artist is not something where you can just go on maternity leave…[artists who are women] can take a break, but nobody will make their work for them,” said Corrias, whose 25-strong roster is 56% female. “You can work for a company and go on maternity leave, and someone will cover for you.”

Corrias said as a dealer (and as a parent herself), she accepts and encourages her artists to become parents, with the understanding that it’s a temporary period in what hopefully should be a long and fruitful career path that she and her artists are building together.

“With the artists that I show who are women, I’m as encouraging as I possibly can be, and I understand they’ll be taking a break, and then they’ll be coming back,” she said. She recalled a (perhaps apocryphal) story she heard, about a major London dealer who told women he represented, “If you have children, I’m going to drop you.” It’s hard to imagine his male artists received the same warning, even though men become parents at roughly the same rate as women (science!).

Still, many artists who are women and parents told Artsy last year that motherhood, while a logistical challenge that any working parent must navigate, has not impacted their career.

Geographic disparity

Interestingly, North American dealers in the sample on the whole tended to have slightly better representation of female artists than their European counterparts, even though the U.S. (where all but three of the North American dealers in our sample are located) is the only advanced economy that does not offer paid family leave or even paid maternity leave to its citizens. European Union countries all offer at least 14 weeks of paid maternity leave, and many offer considerably more generous benefits, including subsidized child care, which one might expect would give female artists in Europe slightly more support as they transition into parenthood.

But the artist roster for female North American dealers is split 36% female to 64% male, while at their European counterparts, the balance tipped slightly more male, at 30% to 70%. Male North American dealers’ rosters are 73% male, while European male dealers are, again, a slightly higher 76% male.

Several dealers said that galleries’ more equal representation of women in the U.S. could also be due to the number of powerful female collectors, museum board members, and trustees in the country, citing Beth Rudin deWoody and Agnes Gund as two prominent examples.

A gallery is “an extension of the person who runs it and owns it”

In addition to the day-to-day realities that shape women’s and men’s careers differently, several female dealers with above-average representation of female artists said they thought the disparity between who women and men represent could be attributed to a personal or intangible factor.

Nicole Russo, who founded Chapter NY on the Lower East Side three and a half years ago, never consciously sought to build a program that was predominantly women (six out of her nine artists are women), but to the extent that “any gallery is an extension of the person who runs it and owns it,” the outcome wasn’t altogether surprising.

“Hey, I’m a feminist. I’m going to subconsciously or consciously spend time looking at women artists…and it organically came about that the roster is more women artists,” Russo said. “Obviously, I think all my artists are amazing, and they’re all people I want to help and be a part of their careers in any way that I can.”

Vienna dealer Rosemarie Schwarzwälder of Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder nodded to the flipside of that equation. “Not to fall into clichés, because it’s what you always hear, but I think the alliance between men is always very strong,” she said. “You yourself as a journalist may realize that maybe with your women colleagues it’s easier. This is a psychological or sociological question.”

Schwarzwälder said her gallery through the 1980s did not represent a very high share of female artists (today it is 43% female), although she always showed women, even if they were represented by another gallery. In subsequent decades she began adding more women, which she stressed was not out of a conscious effort to seek out more women, but often through finding women artists whose work had previously been overlooked. She cited the discovery about five years ago, through the collector JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey, of the artist and poet Alice Attie, now in her late sixties. Of course, she said, that always raises the question: “Why was this overlooked?”

A “trend of looking back”

At New York’s Salon 94, partner and director Alissa Friedman said when she joined nearly 11 years ago, her early conversations with founder Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn were less about an artist’s gender and more about whether that person was underappreciated.

“I don’t remember having a conversation about whether someone was a man or a woman, it was more about whether someone was interesting, or who was underrepresented,” Friedman said.

Those underrepresented artists were, quite often, women, thanks to the cumulative impact of society-wide disadvantage faced by pretty much everyone who wasn’t a straight white man. Using that criteria—“artists who had been working for 20 years, had had a career, but for whatever reason were underrecognized, typically commercially, or in some cases critically or institutionally,” as Friedman described it—led her and Rohatyn to artists such as Marilyn Minter and Laurie Simmons. The gallery also recently added iconic feminist artist Judy Chicago to its roster.

“I’d say it’s evolved organically, and we’ve also developed more consciousness about it,” Friedman said. Now, “We embrace it, and we talk about it. We’re a strong gallery for women artists.”

Friedman noted their approach has been more widely adopted, as dealers around the world seek to unearth overlooked or underappreciated artists among the many who were excluded from mainstream success in their time.

“There’s also a trend of looking back, and trying to discover an artist who has been overlooked until now or who had their moment in the late 1970s,” Friedman said. “There is this attempt to broaden our understandings of artmaking, and how it has been marketed…so in that way, women have gotten maybe more attention” in the past few years.

“Things will change”

But what does that mean for younger artists, who, of course, aren’t eligible for “rediscovery”?

Although Salon 94 doesn’t work with emerging artists, Friedman said from her observation, she believes it is probably more difficult for young women to make their names as artists, due to the ongoing myth of the wunderkind artist, who throughout history (including recent history) has typically been male.

“I think that the art world still kind of celebrates and mythologizes this idea of the ‘bad boy artist,’” she said, noting that with a few exceptions, “especially when you’re talking about the hot artist that everyone’s speculating on, they tend to be male.” But, she added, “as the baton is handed to the next generation, there are increasingly more women who are getting attention and whose prices reflect that,” citing the growing presence of women at the helm of major museums as another factor that should help female artists succeed.

There’s plenty of reason to think things will improve. The younger the gallery, the more likely it was to have female leadership, according to Artsy’s analysis. In the sample of galleries showing at Art Basel in Miami Beach, only galleries 10 years and younger were equally represented between female and male leadership, at 17 apiece. By contrast, among galleries 10 to 20 years old and older than 20 years, there were roughly twice as many run by men as by women.

The younger the gallery, the more balanced its gender ratio, the analysis showed. The younger male-run galleries had 32% female artists, compared with just 23% at galleries more than 20 years old. The younger female-run galleries did even better, with 41% female artists; at the older female-run galleries, the share of female artists was 28%.

Corrias, who is in her forties, said the art world has changed dramatically from the one she studied as a teenager or college student.

“The art market was pretty much dominated by white male artists until about 20 years ago,” she said, noting that art world’s dominant “center” has been fragmented into “many centers” around the world.

In the meantime, “it’s just a question of keeping going, it’s not a fait accompli,” she said. “But if you believe in the work and support it and keep selling it, then things will change.”

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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