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Its Rinaldo posted:Death, freedom, or infinite mind torture prison seems like a poor set of options for containing a magic user criminal Well, those are the options that Wanda had because while Wanda is extremely powerful in terms of how much magic she can toss around, she never even believed she was using magic until Agatha clued her in. Probably people like Dr. Strange or the Ancient One have further option because they know a lot more about magic than Wanda did/does. And that's just with magic, this issue actually brings up a larger point. Take a look at this list So, first the folks who are still alive in one form or another: Sonny Burch Dormammu Emil Blonsky/Abomination Ghost Yon-Ragg Helmut Zemo Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes The Mandarin/Trevor Slattery Red Skull(?) The Vulture Loki So that's eleven of 28 that weren't straight up killed in their movies. Of those, Sonny Burch, Helmut Zemo, Trevor Slattery and The Vulture are basically normal human beings with maybe some tech gadgets who can reasonably be held in a normal human jail. Ghost was apparently mostly cured (and presumably had her powers removed) by Janet Van Dyne and Ghost seemed to be moving toward reform/retirement. Yon-Ragg didn't seem to have intrinsic powers but he had a lot of advanced tech and got sent back to the Kree in any case. Winter Soldier and Loki seem to have moved from the villain category to the hero (or at least protagonist) category. Dormammu was dealt with by literally making a deal with him. Red Skull was so transformed by his situation that he may as well be dead. Only Emil Blonsky seemed to have kept his power, stayed a villain and stayed alive and even that's unclear. It's possible that Banner's blood and the corrupted Super-Soldier Serum were flushed from his body. Presumably we'll find out in the She-Hulk series. But my point is that there really aren't many good options for dealing with intrinsically powered beings. There's no Superjail for them. They either die, reform and otherwise lose their powers/ability to threaten.
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Mar 11, 2021 02:22
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Its Rinaldo posted:Death, freedom, or infinite mind torture prison seems like a poor set of options for containing a magic user criminal One imagines there's some way to depower a witch, but neither we nor Wanda really knows. If she like, broke her fingers and sewed up her mouth would that do it? Deeply inhumane regardless... how about a magic stone, maybe some kind of potion, a special song and dance like who knows. Wanda would have had to like, take Agatha with her and keep constant watch over her while trying to study and figure out how to deal with her long term but like that would have been suuuuuch a pain in the rear end and it really would have got in the way with her living a peaceful happy life studying dark magic.
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Mar 11, 2021 02:42
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Or she could have just handed Agatha over to SWORD, the government task force that was literally right there and was now under the supervision of people she had more reason to trust. A government task force that she knows from personal experience have access to a prison specifically built to house superhuman criminals. Being locked in a jail cell wearing a straight jacket and something to restrain your speech isn't the nicest circumstances in the world, but it's a drat sight better than what Wanda actually did. Which is assuming she doesn't know about someone like Dr Strange, or believe they have any way to permanently remove Agatha's power. Edit: if Wanda really can just lock someone inside a new personality she has control over, she could probably just lock Agatha in the a personality identical to her normal one but with no memory of her power or how to utilize it. Or one of a now forcibly contrite Agatha. I'm just gonna presume that Wanda's rather cruel punishment is meant to reflect her current personality, and foreshadow that she still isn't really heroic. If Dr Strange 2 doesn't go with that, then oh well, but I certainly am not going to take it as definite that Wanda was meant to have done a good thing or anything. tsob fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Mar 11, 2021 |
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Mar 11, 2021 02:58
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Ignoring the TV show does Shield still exist in the MCU?
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Mar 11, 2021 03:06
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:Ignoring the TV show does Shield still exist in the MCU? Probably no, but it’s not been explicitly said what Nick Fury is exactly in charge of these days.
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Mar 11, 2021 03:27
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That Shakman quote would be way more satisfying if the poo poo she did to Agatha didn't completely undercut that whole moment. unless the unspoken ending to 'heroes don't torture people' is 'except criminals, who aren't people'
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Mar 11, 2021 03:33
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:Ignoring the TV show does Shield still exist in the MCU? Aside from Fury getting a Helicarrier from maybe-SHIELD then no. Darth Brooks fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Mar 11, 2021 |
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Mar 11, 2021 03:52
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XboxPants posted:One imagines there's some way to depower a witch, but neither we nor Wanda really knows. If she like, broke her fingers and sewed up her mouth would that do it? Deeply inhumane regardless... how about a magic stone, maybe some kind of potion, a special song and dance like who knows. Wanda would have had to like, take Agatha with her and keep constant watch over her while trying to study and figure out how to deal with her long term but like that would have been suuuuuch a pain in the rear end and it really would have got in the way with her living a peaceful happy life studying dark magic. tsob posted:Or she could have just handed Agatha over to SWORD, the government task force that was literally right there and was now under the supervision of people she had more reason to trust. A government task force that she knows from personal experience have access to a prison specifically built to house superhuman criminals. Honestly, some of these "remedies" feel like they're going to lead to the "shocking" revelation that, "Wait, you mean that Dungeons and Dragons is a bunch of bullshit?" There's a cool bit from Fringe where Peter uses a tactic he's sure will work to beat an enemy and it seems to work before being completely reversed a couple of seconds later. Then one of that enemy tells him, "You don't even know what you don't know." That's where Wanda was at the end of WandaVision. Hell, that's where we all are right now. Figure part of the reason she's studying the Darkhold isn't to learn the answers about magic - it's to learn the questions. tsob posted:Edit: if Wanda really can just lock someone inside a new personality she has control over, she could probably just lock Agatha in the a personality identical to her normal one but with no memory of her power or how to utilize it. Or one of a now forcibly contrite Agatha. Wanda probably doesn't know how to do that - at least in terms of fine-tuning a personality like that. She did know the character of Agnes, so that's who she used. tsob posted:I'm just gonna presume that Wanda's rather cruel punishment is meant to reflect her current personality, and foreshadow that she still isn't really heroic. If Dr Strange 2 doesn't go with that, then oh well, but I certainly am not going to take it as definite that Wanda was meant to have done a good thing or anything. I think it's partly, maybe even mostly the necessity of the moment, but when Agatha called Wanda cruel for doing it, Wanda did give a little smile of acknowledgement, I thought. Also, per "D&D is BS," I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised if Agatha goaded Wanda into doing what she did because Agatha had already set up a contingency plan to get out of it. We're all going "Oh, no how horrible that Wanda trapped Agatha forever like that!" when off screen, 30 seconds after it happened Ralph Bohner gave her a scroll or some of Sparky's fur or something and Agatha popped back to normal right there.
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Mar 11, 2021 05:00
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It lasting only 30 seconds wouldn't take away that Wanda did it with the expectation it'd last much longer. Nor that she absolutely could have handed Agatha off to SWORD, because putting someone in an isolated cell with physical restraints doesn't rely at all on DnD bullshit.
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Mar 11, 2021 05:14
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It relies on Sword being competent to keep Agnes contained, which is extremely doubtful. Wanda could use Sword stormtroopers as puppets when she stepped outside the Hex, and Agnes is more willing to kill than Wanda.
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Mar 11, 2021 06:02
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As far as Wanda knows, everyone in SWORD was fine with dissecting Vision and trying to turn him into a weapon. Why would she trust any of them?
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Mar 11, 2021 06:11
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Servetus posted:It relies on Sword being competent to keep Agnes contained, which is extremely doubtful. Wanda could use Sword stormtroopers as puppets when she stepped outside the Hex, and Agnes is more willing to kill than Wanda. The same system kept her contained, and Agatha hasn't shown or implied that she can magic without talking or using her hands, so why would Wanda think it wouldn't work oh Agatha? The X-man cometh posted:As far as Wanda knows, everyone in SWORD was fine with dissecting Vision and trying to turn him into a weapon. Why would she trust any of them? She just saw the guy orchestrating that taken out by others and arrested, and someone she has a mutual understanding with seems to be the new lead. So because of that? The fact that SWORD dissected Vision previously would count in their favour if she's feeling vengeful, if anything
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Mar 11, 2021 06:45
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The X-man cometh posted:As far as Wanda knows, everyone in SWORD was fine with dissecting Vision and trying to turn him into a weapon. Why would she trust any of them? Yeah, this. The director of SWORD was just revealed to be insane and after a power grab of resurrecting her dead boyfriend to make the perfect big gun to stroke his ego with. Their people were willing to fire at her (real or not) children, with direction to kill. Theres also the fact that the closest thing we have seen to a super jail (the Raft) explicitly only worked because no one in it was willing to kill everyone working there to get out. Half the people who got contained in the Raft could have broken out on their own, Wanda included, it would have just meant sinking it and everyone else who was in it, and since everyone in it was nominally heroic, none of them were willing to take a risk that could kill hundreds. Agatha would not have that to keep her in it, if they tried to send her there. She has been explicitly killing people for 400 years. So the only real option for containing her is straight jacket with 24/7 gag in mouth (or even more gruesome stuff like sewing her mouth shut or ripping out her tongue) so that she can never speak again. Or taking her to Dr. Strange, which again, Wanda met only in the battle against thanos in Endgame, and he is not exactly a friendly chatty fellow, so I wouldn't be surprised if he dipped out to check the sanctums as soon as that fight ended.
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Mar 11, 2021 06:50
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Even stuff like the Raft of the comics, and Arkham Asylum as a DC comparison, are hilariously prone to spontaneous breakouts of various sizes. When you're up against a comics villain with even fairly mild superpowers, the only good options are to convince them to voluntarily sit in jail/accept a punishment, get leverage and force them to do things that are at least hero-adjacent (your Suicide Squad and Thunderbolts route), talk them into retirement/a life of peace, or put them in the ground. Anyway, I think that's the perspective if you're looking at it purely pragmatically and with cold unfeeling logic.
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Mar 11, 2021 07:59
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A brainwash wasnt particularly cruel treatment of an ancient witch vampire murderer. How is putting her in permanent super isolation in ultra jail for the rest of time a better and less cruel option??
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Mar 11, 2021 08:20
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Collapsing Farts posted:A brainwash wasnt particularly cruel treatment of an ancient witch vampire murderer. How is putting her in permanent super isolation in ultra jail for the rest of time a better and less cruel option?? Taking away someone's free will and enslaving them is a particularly cruel treatment no matter who you are
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Mar 11, 2021 09:25
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You're taking away someones free will by putting them in isolation as well, that's sort of the point of isolation. They can breathe and exist and nothing else Do you even know how loving horrific jail isolation cells are
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Mar 11, 2021 09:31
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Yeah I really don't get the discourse around this. Would I like to be mind trapped in the wrong but overall relatively benign life? No. Would I prefer to be killed or handed over to NASA for a lifetime of experimentation and ultra-secure imprisonment/isolation? Nope.
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Mar 11, 2021 09:31
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Collapsing Farts posted:You're taking away someones free will by putting them in isolation as well, that's sort of the point of isolation. They can breathe and exist and nothing else I didn't say poo poo about how isolation or jail would be better, watch your tone feels like you are just looking for a reason to be an rear end in a top hat.
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Mar 11, 2021 09:41
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We don't need to workshop ideas for what Wanda should've done instead. The whole discussion just gets trapped in weird false dichotomies. It's literally a world where magic is real and technology can be any thing the writers want it to be. They could've written anything else as a resolution to Agatha's arc, but they had Wanda do the exact kind of torture to her that she's supposed to have rejected. It sucks, and it completely undercuts the scene where she ~bravely~ endures the harsh stares of Westfields residents.
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Mar 11, 2021 09:42
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Everyone posted:There's a cool bit from Fringe where Peter uses a tactic he's sure will work to beat an enemy and it seems to work before being completely reversed a couple of seconds later. Then one of that enemy tells him, "You don't even know what you don't know." That's where Wanda was at the end of WandaVision. Hell, that's where we all are right now. Figure part of the reason she's studying the Darkhold isn't to learn the answers about magic - it's to learn the questions. This is an old definition of the path to wisdom. You start in total ignorance, not knowing how much you don't know. You begin to learn, but you don't know how much you know. Then, you become an expert and know how much you know. Lastly, you become wise and know how much you don't know.
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Mar 11, 2021 09:44
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Wanda rejected the use of it on innocent civilians caught in her magic. She never said anything about never using magic to punish evil witches In fact, I bet you ten internet bucks that she will use a lot of magic to punish a lot of bad guys going forward
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Mar 11, 2021 09:48
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Collapsing Farts posted:Wanda rejected the use of it on innocent civilians caught in her magic. She never said anything about never using magic to punish evil witches The line that got through to her was "Heroes don't torture people."
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Mar 11, 2021 10:33
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Wanda isn’t a hero.
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Mar 11, 2021 10:53
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If you look at it from Agatha's perspective, she's a centuries old witch who goes to investigate potential chaos magic use in New Jersey only to discover Wanda, who's so dangerous that she caused the Sokovia Accords and almost killed Thanos in one on one combat, imprisoning and torturing an entire town so she can play house with a family that she created entirely from scratch. Agatha decides to take her down, fails and gets imprisoned herself. And that doesn't get into Wanda running off to study the Darkhold in her very devilish looking astral form. Wanda's the hero of this show cause it's called WandaVision but she didn't do anything heroic so of course sealing up Agatha in Kimmie Gibler is bad
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Mar 11, 2021 11:05
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CelticPredator posted:Wanda isn’t a hero. If she doesn't consider herself a hero, why does that line provoke guilt from her? What makes torturing Agatha okay but not the Westview citizens? Like if they want her to not feel guilt about this, then imprisoning/torturing Agatha makes sense. But if she's supposed to feel remorseful about what she's done, then it doesnt. It's just a mess, from a thematic standpoint.
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Mar 11, 2021 11:12
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Everyone posted:There's no Superjail for them.  The Raft does exist, it's just only been used to hold Avengers or characters from Jessica Jones off camera.
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Mar 11, 2021 11:24
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Varinn posted:If she doesn't consider herself a hero, why does that line provoke guilt from her? What makes torturing Agatha okay but not the Westview citizens? Like if they want her to not feel guilt about this, then imprisoning/torturing Agatha makes sense. But if she's supposed to feel remorseful about what she's done, then it doesnt. It's just a mess, from a thematic standpoint. she's neither a hero or a villain, but might become either. how is that messy?
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Mar 11, 2021 11:33
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Varinn posted:If she doesn't consider herself a hero, why does that line provoke guilt from her? What makes torturing Agatha okay but not the Westview citizens? Like if they want her to not feel guilt about this, then imprisoning/torturing Agatha makes sense. But if she's supposed to feel remorseful about what she's done, then it doesnt. It's just a mess, from a thematic standpoint. Sometimes I gently caress up a bit and have guilt. That doesn’t make me a hero. That just makes me a human being with emotions.
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Mar 11, 2021 11:38
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sebmojo posted:she's neither a hero or a villain, but might become either. how is that messy? In their rush to tie up Agatha's plot, they have Vision watch her put a person under indefinite mind-torture control, and say nothing about it. He'd been screaming at her about this exact thing like four episodes ago! It's a complete abdication of his position as the moral center, the person who has been the most strident about how Wanda's mind control is morally wrong. I'm willing to concede that Monica is just weird and willing to give her a pass, that's fine, sure. Monica's looking out for her. But I just can't square Vision watching her do that and going 'well, its fine if its her. she's a Villain." He's the person who can and does challenge her on the ways she uses her powers unethically. That's messy writing, to me.
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Mar 11, 2021 11:43
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sebmojo posted:she's neither a hero or a villain, but might become either. how is that messy? Exactly. We’re supposed to sympathize with the character while recognizing what she did was wrong. Why are so many people equating the two?
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Mar 11, 2021 11:43
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The thing I like about the ending is that for once it's slightly realistic. Like, if someone had SUPER GODDAMN CHAOS POWERS!!!! The reality is they'd likely do some hosed up poo poo, and know that it was kind of hosed up, but still, do it and be sort of sorry, and also kind of not hate themselves forever over it? (But think about it often and lose sleep). Some people do hit and runs with their cars. Not every single person who does a hit and run is a cut and dry 'villain', "kill them at the end of the movie for a feelgood ending". But it's still a SUPER hosed up thing to do! We've seen that Wanda can't really control her powers, that they're very reactionary and an extension of her emotions (which, y'know, she doesn't control) and that her 'intent' was never 'to horrifically enslave'. But, that is what she did! Her backtracking and post-rationalizing stuff is really human. It's a really really lovely human quality. I think it's a really interesting way of dealing with it, by saying, "Yeah, we think she's basically a good person, but even basically good people can be kinda poo poo". I know it's been in the thread before, but loads of the heroes have like a gritty 'backstory' about how they've done some bad things they're not proud of, the difference is that the movies don't dwell on them, or make us watch. They just reference them in shorthand so we can handwave it "Yeah but he's basically a good guy". "Yeah, but she's trying to do right now". etc. To actually SHOW the lovely stuff, and it be current is actually really interesting. Most of the time when heroes feel bad about past mistakes, it's like that old interview question "what's your worst quality" and the quality is "perfectionism". Only now, for Wanda it's like "what's your worst quality" "I'm trying to work on how I enslaved a bunch of people" and that's real, we've seen it, and we kinda hate her for it and she'll have to do something pretty big to win us back over! But also, we kinda don't want to totally hate her so we'll give her the chance to try. I think it's a really interesting place to have a character.
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Mar 11, 2021 12:43
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KittyEmpress posted:Theres also the fact that the closest thing we have seen to a super jail (the Raft) explicitly only worked because no one in it was willing to kill everyone working there to get out. Half the people who got contained in the Raft could have broken out on their own, Wanda included, it would have just meant sinking it and everyone else who was in it, and since everyone in it was nominally heroic, none of them were willing to take a risk that could kill hundreds. When are we explicitly shown that half the people in it could have broken out on their own, out of interest? NowonSA posted:Even stuff like the Raft of the comics, and Arkham Asylum as a DC comparison, are hilariously prone to spontaneous breakouts of various sizes. When you're up against a comics villain with even fairly mild superpowers, the only good options are to convince them to voluntarily sit in jail/accept a punishment, get leverage and force them to do things that are at least hero-adjacent (your Suicide Squad and Thunderbolts route), talk them into retirement/a life of peace, or put them in the ground. It's probably not a useful perspective to consider for anyone inside that setting only just after the setting has introduced that kind of superjail, and there hasn't been any kind of significant break solely from the inside yet. Collapsing Farts posted:You're taking away someones free will by putting them in isolation as well, that's sort of the point of isolation. They can breathe and exist and nothing else The raft was in an isolated location and the prisoners were in singular cells, but the cells were not isolated from each other physically and the prisoners there could see and communicate with each other because the cells were in close proximity and had bars rather than walls. Wanda was physically restrained in a straight jacket, since use of her hands allowed her use of her powers, but Clint, Sam and Scott were basically in a cell similar to any other cell in any other jail even outside the US despite Tony's description of it as a supermax prison. We have no idea if or how much time they were given outside their cells, but it's unlikely to be zero given that most of them don't have any particular power without their equipment and the jail itself is so far from any place else that it would be basically impossible to engineer an escape without outside interference anyway. Jail cells take away someone's physical freedom, but literally trapping someone in their mind takes away their mental freedom and leaves them with no way to even express themselves. One is a worse version of the other in every single way. It's probably why the residents were begging Wanda to kill them after maybe a fortnight in the hex. ghostwritingduck posted:Exactly. We’re supposed to sympathize with the character while recognizing what she did was wrong. Why are so many people equating the two? I sympathize with Wanda, and recognize that her action condemning Agatha to mental torture 24/7 as a permanent solution is a horrible thing that may be foreshadowing her personality or actions for the moment, especially in tandem with her reading the Darkholt afterwards. I also recognize that it may not be foreshadowing, and may just have been the writers trying to tidy up a loose end, without really thinking about the implications. I'm hopeful it's the former instead of the later, but I'm not discounting the possibility all the same. Why can't I discuss why what Wanda did is kind of horrific or point out that there were probably other solutions if it wasn't meant to cast her in a slightly villainous light? I don't think that kind of punitive treatment is a particularly good solution, for Wanda herself or for Agatha, but I do think it's at least preferable to what Agatha got and that with public knowledge of Dr. Strange and magic in general increasing within the setting that probably wouldn't need to be so draconian on a permanent basis, which is what Agatha's current treatment is. Permanent, bar Wanda arbitrarily deciding to end it.
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Mar 11, 2021 13:08
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In one of the FAWS clips they put out this week, Sam talks about "the big three: aliens, androids and wizards." Given that Agatha had a huge magic fight with Wanda, it seems likely that any law enforcement agency that got their hands on Agatha would throw her into the bottom of a pit.
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Mar 11, 2021 13:22
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Varinn posted:In their rush to tie up Agatha's plot, they have Vision watch her put a person under indefinite mind-torture control, and say nothing about it. He'd been screaming at her about this exact thing like four episodes ago! It's a complete abdication of his position as the moral center, the person who has been the most strident about how Wanda's mind control is morally wrong. Yeah regardless of 'hero or villain' the show absolutely ducks following through on the Vision-Wanda conflict that was the high-water mark of the writing at the middle of the season. Vision forgets that he's horrified at what Wanda's done because that would mean taking away Wanda's 'happy' ending.
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Mar 11, 2021 14:20
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socialsecurity posted:Taking away someone's free will and enslaving them is a particularly cruel treatment no matter who you are How is Agatha enslaved? She's free to do whatever she wants, just with a personality transplant. The Hex is gone, and she's not being summoned to act in Wanda's TV life any more. Agnes can do anything she wants, she's a jail cell for Agatha, but that's better than the raft.
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Mar 11, 2021 14:23
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Agatha is a centuries old magic thief that steals magic users life force to survive, she's a murderer and probably has a higher body count than Wanda and in most other works of fiction she would have been killed and it would have been portrayed as the correct/only option to deal with her. But condemn her to a life in suburbia and that's a step too far. I find the moral ambiguity of the situation more compelling than clear cut black and white, good v bad stuff they have done in the past. Wanda isn't a good guy and her actions since her introduction to the MCU have reflected that. If shifting to more long form storytelling can introduce more of that to the MCU I'm all for it.
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Mar 11, 2021 14:41
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It seems like a lot of you are conflating ruthless murder with justifiable homicide. Textbook self-defense the way I see it. I'm also struggling to find exactly what crime Agatha committed that she needs to be punished for. Around for over 400 years and we have no cases of her bothering anyone else. She recognized a potential extinction level event and tried everything in her power to prevent it. Am I supposed to believe she's evil just because she has a familiar? That's an antiquated notion and frankly magist. Imprisoning an immortal to a fate that's explicitly depicted as worse than death for eternity is the single cruelest act we've seen in the MCU. I can't wait for Wanda to get her comeuppance. ♫ Agatha did Nothing Wrong ♫
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Mar 11, 2021 14:43
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Just to be clear, we have zero idea who is going to be in charge of SWORD or the FBI or whatever at this point and it'd be strange to expect Wanda to just assume it'll be someone like Monica, who suggested nothing of the sort, or Jimmy, who she didn't even meet. You don't just get to be in charge just because you defeated the competition in combat. This isn't Wakanda, after all. 
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Mar 11, 2021 14:44
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Agatha kills a half dozen witches and her own mother at the start of episode 8 and the dialogue makes it clear she's been loving around with dangerous forbidden magic risking the whole coven and also she has the Darkhold which is literally a book of forbidden dark magic.
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Mar 11, 2021 14:46
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