When I got home, the house was quiet and dark. I found Melissa on our bed, looking as sad as I’ve seen her in a long time.

It was around 7:30PM, and she had been following the election news. This year is different for her. This is the first year she has been motivated enough to read up on all the items on the ballot and vote. Voting for Harris to avoid another Trump disaster is paramount to both of us.

It’s 8:40PM, and the electoral map does not look good. I glanced at BlueSky and the mood there is also not good. Some folks are desperately trying to keep hope alive, because this is what the electoral map looked like 4 years ago. It took days for the blue shift to settle in.

Rural, less populated counties are — for some stupid reason — more inclined to vote for Trump, and those smaller areas report sooner. It takes longer to count the urban votes and the places where people actually live. Some states are getting called for Trump that haven’t actually tallied the votes of their cites. It’s stupid, demoralizing, and depressing.

It’s probably also important to remember that the news organizations that are declaring for Trump at this stage are the same people that have been carrying water for Trump for weeks.

I still think Harris has a shot. But even if the blue wave fully materializes and delivers us a Harris presidency, we still have millions and millions of people that voted for a racist, rapist, fascist, felon in physical and mental decline.

We still have millions of people that wanted to choose Trump because they think he loves America. They apparently never listened to him, because every other word out of his mouth disparages our great nation. Even his motto implies that we’re somehow less than we are. Trump doesn’t love America. He only loves himself.

We still have millions of people that wanted to choose Trump because they think he promotes Christianity. The guy that sold Bibles made in China to pay for his court fees, which were incurred at least partly from his extramarital affair with a porn star. Trump is an anti-Christ. He doesn’t love God. He only loves himself.

We still have millions of people that wanted to choose Trump because they thought he’d be good for the economy. The guy that couldn’t make a casino profitable. How many failed businesses have Trump’s name on them? Under Trump, the economy tanked, and unemployment was up to just under 15%. Trump has never been good for the economy. The only person Trump wants to enrich is himself.

Harris could still win. She ran a great campaign. Her plans make sense, unlike Trump’s insane tariff plan.

The man stood in front of crowds and talked about how he would be a dictator if elected, and millions of people showed up on election day and tried to put him back in office. These people have no memory.

On top of that, at this point in the evening, the senate races aren’t looking great. I was really hoping Cruz would get sent packing, but that weaselly scumbag will remain in office. Texas, you disappoint me again.

I’m going to go to bed early tonight, I think. This whole year has been exhausting. I’m so sick of seeing that asshole’s face, and hearing his whiny voice. Trump exists mostly to make me doubt the existence of justice in this world.

Maybe I’ll drink a bit before going to bed. Just to be sure.

Good morning, friends and frenemies! It’s time for me to talk about this show that has had me buzzing for days. I’m at a Shut up and Write, and ostensibly, I should be working on The Psychic Out of Time, but I don’t have my glasses, OneDrive is taking forever to sync, and I feel a little bit distracted because I really, really want to talk about Agatha All Along.

If you haven’t watched it yet, let me say two things.

1. It’s very good. You should watch it. Watch WandaVision first to get context, then watch Agatha All Along. It really is better to go into it without spoiliers.
2. Stop reading this and go watch the show.

Spoilers beyond this point. You have been warned.

When they first started promoting the show, they did it with all the actors coming out on stage, singing the Ballad of the Witches Road. When I first saw this, I thought, “Well, that’s weird. Is this supposed to be a musical?” But it all makes sense in retrospect. The song is the throughline of the show. All of the threads are woven out of that song. It is the inciting incident that we get to witness in the epilogue.

Let’s pull on some of these threads and see where they take us.

We start the story with Agatha still under the spell Wanda used to trap her in Westview. Agatha imagines herself as a hard-boiled detective trying to solve a strange murder, but it’s all layers of metaphor symbolizing Agatha’s struggle to be reborn from her past life. The dead body looks like Wanda, but the toe tag tells us that it’s really The Darkhold, which weighed Agatha down as much as Wanda’s spell. The Darkhold is destroyed, Wanda’s spell is broken, and Agatha emerges from all of it, stripped down and free to start over.

But, this isn’t a redemption story, and Agatha is still a monster. We may sympathize with her, but she hasn’t changed. The only think that’s changed is her circumstances. She still chooses to do what she has always done, which is trick witches into giving her their power so that she can survive.

Let’s talk about some relationships and parallels in this story.

Agatha and Teen is obvious and sweet. Teen reminds her of the son she lost. In that way, Teen occasionally inspires Agatha to be a better version of herself, right up to the end where she finally takes the kiss of death, dying so that Teen can live.

Agatha and Lilia is a bit less obvious. They both see Death. Agatha has a tumultuous relationship with Death, and spends much of her life fleeing her, steeling power so that she can survive, and hating Death for taking her son. Lilia’s power forces her to see death, so she spends much of her life fleeing her power so that she no longer is tormented by the things that she sees. In the end, Lilia realizes that she loves herself, her power, being a witch, and she chooses to fall and embrace death. They both embraced death, for different reasons, and it’s beautiful in both cases.

Agatha and Jen are both witches that have lost their power and in both cases, Agatha is the one responsible. Jen lost her power because Agatha was paid to bind her, and didn’t even think about it. Agatha lost her power because she tangled with The Scarlet Witch. They are both restored, but Agatha lays down on the ground and becomes one with it, turning to soil and flowers, while Jen emerges from the dirt into the light, free to take flight and lift off into the sky.

Agatha and Alice are essentially opposites, and we have to include Alice’s mother Lorna to see the complete picture. Agatha is the witch that lost her child in spite her best efforts. Alice is the child of a witch that survived because of her mother’s best efforts. Agatha and her son made up the song as a kind of game, and when Nicholas Scratch died, Agatha used the song as a kind of weapon to take the powers of other witches. Lorna Wu adapted the same song and sang it to her fans, which she thought of as her coven, so the song itself became a kind of shield always there to protect Alice. In both cases, it’s a mother’s love. Agatha’s love twisted by grief into something dark, and Lorna’s love uplifted in hope to provide a light for her daughter.

That brings us back to Teen, Billy Kaplan, reincarnated son of Wanda Maximoff, because a mother’s love persisted.

I think I could go on, but that’s probably enough. I love this show. I’m looking forward to watching it again.

It’s good, clever writing, executed on a tight budget and punching way above its weight class. Consider the scene where Billy Maximoff takes over the body of Billy Kaplan. There aren’t any huge special effects in this scene. There is the sound of a slowing heartbeat, a subtle push-in with the camera, and then Billy shouts for his brother. It’s a flawless execution which tells the story as efficiently as possible. It’s perfect.

I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I did. Let me know if there’s some nuance that really speaks to you that I may have missed.