Thank you so much for looking at my work :) This started as a photo study from @galedekarios and was also my first piece using MaxPack’s Gouache brushes. I have been looking for a brush set like that for a very long time, they’re the closest thing I’ve found that lets me replicate my traditional painting style and experience.
I put Gale in green because I often think about whether or not he actually likes purple or if it’s just something he’s always defaulted to because of Mystra. I also used the design of the Blackstaff for his earring because 1. I didn’t want him to have Mystra’s earring and 2. I wanted this to very specifically be him a year or two after the game settled into his position as a professor. I also think he looks gorgeous in green 😂
I wanted a wave-like pattern for his robes to symbolise Waterdeep, and the quilted leather shoulder I wanted to be reminiscent of armour but look more like a plush leather chair one would find in a library.
being black in any art community is such a strange feeling cause you’ll see just blatant racism being expressed in others art and you have to just casually ignore it, for your sake if anything, colorism being something that’s just fundamentally there in every artist and you deal with it cause it’s not worth it in the end to even think of it too hard let alone even mentioning it, it’s definitely something
Hello nonblack reader of this post, I think you ought to share this one so that you and your peers can actively remind yourselves 1) of how your Black peers feel when you tolerate antiblack racism in your art spaces for entertainment and 2) that we notice it, but don't believe it is secure around enough of you to bring it up 🙏🏾
Wow, what an episode!! This is the first that felt like it just FLEW along. We're really in it now!
Love these guys outside Avon’s girlfriend’s place carrying lacrosse equipment. Bunk’s legacy!
LET THE GAME BEGIN!!!
-Sigh, Bodie's anger at Wallace for playing with the toy.....I think it's partly genuinely thinking this kind of behavior is what got them robbed - remember how angry he looked throughout the robbery - but it's also a reaction to Bodie's recent experience, right? It's a (crude and harsh) way of telling Wallace, you are in an environment where you can wake up from a police beating surrounded by guys you don't know who likely hate you on sight. You will not survive if you are soft like this.
Of course, Bodie is himself an enforcer of the "rules" that make it so dangerous to be like Wallace. He is one of the enactors of the consequences that he is, on some level, here trying to protect Wallace from. Which is his central tragedy, isn't it.
-ANYWAY, let's make fun of Stringer's fashion choices! This is absolutely ludicrous:
I think because we've already seen him rocking properly-fitting buttondowns and slacks. He looks like he's put on a costume to go down to the Pit.
-And the award for most analog-age shot of the episode goes to:
-Jimmy getting mad at Elena for questioning whether he bought the stuff for the kids' bedroom when he did not, in fact, buy the stuff...UGH!!! I enjoy Jimmy as a cop but I truly have NO patience for his failings as a father and (ex-)husband, god he pisses me off so bad. GROW UP!
-I’m not sure if it’s funny or sad that Bodie immediately went back to spending all his time at the Pit while he’s a fugitive. Like dude they’re obviously going to find you there, what exactly was your plan here. But OTOH, what else would he have done, really. If animal trapped…
-Some nice consistency in JD Williams' depiction of Bodie's injuries: when he jumps up to run from Herc and Carv here, he grabs the same spot on his chest/ribs that was evidently hurting worst in the last episode:
(Ok it's impossible to see in that last cap but I swear it's the same spot, and he keeps holding it as he's running)
-Obviously I'm sure Bodie never actually intended to call Herc, but I do like to think about the fact that his grandma gave him the card and he's been carrying it around in his pocket since then.
-Aww Herc, sorry your nice moment with Grandma didn't pay off....I'm sure this won't teach you the wrong lesson about respecting the people you police at all!
-I can't let myself screencap every time Carver smiles at Herc, but Seth Gilliam seems to be incapable of doing it without conveying pure love.
-Love this interrogation scene because it's two of my faves interacting, but Carv is sooo embarrassing it's almost unbearable 😭
-But! A shred of Carv backstory! He's lying through his teeth for half the scene, but I don't think he's lying about being from the projects. It aligns with his ability to code switch later with the kids in Hamsterdam and the S4 corner kids. It also seems like Bodie buys that part?
-They didn't need to light JDW in this scene like a damn Caravaggio painting, but I sure am glad they did:
(pls note I say JDW rather than Bodie because he was in his 20s here, so I don't feel bad admiring how pretty he is)
-So Dee is using his bonus money to take Donette to the fancy restaurant (buying something he wouldn't otherwise, like Stringer said to). Glad he didn't spend it all on Shardene.
-Pool scene my beloved!!! So funny to me that Herc is still pretty much being a dick to Bodie here, but Carver is a lot nicer? Like Bodie seeing through his good cop routine made Carv like him more?
-So obsessed with Bodie saying this. There's literally no reason for him to throw Herc a bone here, plus he already admitted the sandwich was good! He just can't pass up an opportunity to be even-handed!
-Avon and String are so cute in this office scene - fully on the same page, being all coy with Stinkum about his promotion, really at their best.
-So Bodie and Poot's conversation about whether you can get HIV from a blowjob (right before Bodie throws the bottle at Wallace) obviously sets up Johnny telling Bubbles he's positive later, that's 101 stuff. But I like that the setup is from two of the guys who put Johnny in the hospital (leading directly to his diagnosis), and that Bodie and Poot's conversation is played for laughs and is so boys-pretending-to-be-men, contrasting with the very real and serious consequences for Johnny.
-Bubbles' "I’m not workin for 'em, I’m workin with 'em!" re his informing for the police...his constant sense of dignity and pride in himself 🥹
-Love Orlando and Dee's office gossip sesh about who's getting promoted and who's getting bonuses
-Also restraining myself from posting every Omar scene captioned "Omar!!!!!", but trust that I'm grinning ear to ear whenever he's on screen
-Another ridiculously and needlessly pretty shot:
-Aaah I’m sad about Brandon getting spotted while he’s hanging out with his friends. Omar is quite isolated aside from his boyfriends, his crew, and Butchie. But Brandon has friends. He goes out to play pinball. He was just a kid too :(
“Whew, world is on its hole when Jimmy McNulty is the most qualified to drive. Yeah, up is down, black is white... Ieft is right.”
William “Bunk” Moreland, 4x12, “That’s Got His Own”.
While I’ve made a number of posts highlighting parallels between seasons of The Wire, I haven’t really explained the logic behind them. But @athena43633 asked whether I thought a scene in 2x11 had a parallel in Season Four. I wasn’t sure, so I started trying to figure it out. It struck me that this was as good an opportunity as any to lay out the thought process behind those posts.
Broadly speaking, my theory is that the show’s narrative structure is something along the lines of:
The particular definition of “antithesis” merits attention, since I’m not using the term in the colloquial sense (i.e. “opposite”). Instead, I’m using it in the sense of “a proposition that contrasts with or reverses some previously mentioned proposition, or when two opposites are introduced together for contrasting effect”. Between Seasons 2 and 4, we get a bit of both, but the second kind of antithesis tends to be more complicated: there are scenes in Season 4 in which two scenes from Season 2—usually from two different institutions—are reversed and combined. To illustrate what I mean by that, take this (relatively) simple example from 4x01:
Visually, this looks like 2x02: we’ve got two different kinds of cop, and McNulty’s looking at a black-and-white photo of someone he recognizes. In 2x02, it’s a picture of his floater; in 4x01, it’s a picture of Lex—a suspect who becomes a victim by the episode’s end. (Note, also, that Bunk has plenty of information on Lex except for where he is, whereas the only information McNulty initially has on his floater is that she’s dead.) So, for McNulty, this scene is a reversal of 2x02. But Bunk’s dialogue is pulling from 2x01. Plus, we get a funny kind of reversal—a literal pulling of the coat in 2x01 becomes figurative in 4x01. So, one scene in Season 4 can be a reversal of two different scenes in Season 2.
With that explanation out of the way, this is the scene in 2x11 (which, for our purposes here, I’ll refer to as 2x11.a) that @athena43633 initially asked about:
What are we looking at here? The scene is in the first ten minutes of the eleventh, i.e. penultimate, episode, and contains no dialogue. It’s morning, Frank is leaving the house and sees the article about Ziggy killing Glekas and wounding the clerk at the appliance store. Nick told him about this in 2x10, so it’s not news to him—but now it’s public knowledge. Although he doesn’t know it, FBI Supervisor Amanda Reese and Valchek are tailing him (plus another unnamed FBI agent driving the car). Valchek is there for reasons which are, in spite of his institutional affiliation, political—whereas Supervisor Reese’s (and the FBI’s) purpose is basically political. (You know how it is with Republicans and union-busting.)
Abstracting the above, this scene is a father is seeing what he heard about his son in print. He serves a family-institution and has tried to guarantee a role for his son within it—a role for which his son is and has always been fundamentally ill-suited. His son has committed an act which puts him on the outside of the family and institution alike with no clear way to bring him back in. Nonetheless, the father feels that it’s his responsibility to find a way to fix this, to make things right.
This scene has 10 episodes of emotional weight behind it, so what we’re looking for is probably somewhere in 4x10-4x13. At its core, the scene is really about Ziggy, a son who can’t live up to the familial expectation for him to be like his father. Based on that the scene, we’re looking for in Season Four would be about Namond. Particular details might be reversed: the time of day, where the scene takes place (indoors vs. outside), format of the message, public vs. private message, nature of the relationship (familial/parental vs. non-familiar/parental), etc. With all of that in the mix, it’s helpful to look at what brought us to that scene in Season Two:
These scenes in 2x10 represent a breaking point for Ziggy and lead to his last interaction with Frank in 2x11. In Season 4, we might be looking for a scene that precedes or follows the last time we see Namond interact with one of his parents—and given Wee-Bey’s situation, it would probably be Namond’s last interaction with Delonda. 4x12 is similarly pivotal for Namond, so that seems like a good place to look.
4x12.a and 2x10.a match on subject matter: theft. In the former, the thieving is a given and the issue is compensation; in the latter the issue is stolen product. 2x10.b and 4x12.b both give us police sirens and a parking meter, but the latter reverses it: the scene takes place at night, and the street outside of Namond’s house is empty.
2x10.c gives us a sergeant offering to let Ziggy make a call to a family member, but Ziggy declines; in 4x12.c, a call was made—Sergeant Carver tells us this much. Finally, 2x10.d is reversed in 4x12.d by virtue of the fact that whereas 2x10.d is when Frank finds out that Ziggy is charged with murder, 4x12.d is when Delonda would have learned there aren’t any charges against Namond if she hadn’t hung up before Carver could tell her.
There’s another sort of alignment between 2x10.b and 4x12.b: both are followed by a scene where the strictly suit-and-tie Bunk Moreland is expressing his distaste for maritime excursions. In Season Two, it’s straightforward: “Y'all trying to drown my ass for sure.” But in Season Four, he’s talking about the events of Season Two:
FREAMON: I mean, I’m police, right? Murder police, and I got bodies. And I’m just supposed to let them lie?
BUNK: ”We don’t throw red up on that board voluntarily”. That John-Goodman-off-his-diet-looking motherfucker was clear on that.
MCNULTY: So go over Landsman’s head.
BUNK: Mm, Jimmy, that’s you—send an anonymous fax. But Lester here don’t fancy boats. And me, I get sick just filling the bathtub.
If there’s a parallel to be found, this seems like an indication that we’re headed in the right direction.
Keeping in mind that one scene in Season 4 can reverse two different scenes in Season 2, let’s take a closer look at 4x12.a:
Delonda finds out about Kenard stealing the stash, but nothing’s been done about it yet. In fact, that’s just the issue: Delonda is angry that Namond didn’t fuck Kenard’s shit up—in other words, the absence of violence is the problem. But, as Namond points out, solving problems with violence is what got his father locked up:
DELONDA: What you mean Kenard took the stash? And he’s still walking around?
NAMOND: I’m gonna talk to him, Ma, make sure this never happen again.
DELONDA: Look at me, boy. Kenard got to feel some pain for what he did. He got to.
NAMOND: I don’t—
DELONDA: You don’t what, motherfucker?! Shit, I been kept you in Nikes since you were in diapers.
NAMOND: I’m trying.
DELONDA: You trying, huh? That’s what you gonna tell your father the next time you see him? That you trying? Or you gonna tell him what you’ve done?
NAMOND: What he done got him locked up—
DELONDA: That’s right. Wee-Bey walked into Jessup a man, and he gonna walk out one. But you out here, wearing his name, acting a bitch! Aw, look at you, crying now. Fuck you think you going? Get your ass back here. I ain’t done talking to you.
The dialogue and visuals line up with two scenes in Season 2, the first being 2x10.d.
There’s a few of ways in which 4x12.a reverses 2x10.d—Delonda slapping Namond being in some ways an inversion of Frank hitting Nick, both scenes ending with one character rushing out of the room and the door shutting behind them—but I also want to note a different kind of inversion. Both feature a remark about a family member being locked up, but on opposite ends of the conversation:
FRANK: What? What happened?
NICK: Ziggy.
FRANK: What the fuck is it this time?
NICK: He shot… they’re saying he shot two of the Greeks. Last night they’re saying.
FRANK: Shot? He shot?
HORSEFACE: Fucking Christ!
NICK: He’s locked up. He’s fucking charged with murder.
FRANK: The Greeks?
NICK: Double G. And one of the kids that works down the the store on the avenue with him. They’re saying he walked in there, he went in—
FRANK: Why was he there? Where were you? Where the fuck were you?
NICK: Uncle Frank, I didn’t know.
FRANK: Didn’t know what? What didn’t you know? What the fuck is Ziggy doing anywhere near the fucking Greeks?
NICK: I don’t know, I don’t—
FRANK: You don’t know? You’re supposed to, you’re his fucking cousin!
NICK: You’re his father.
This is something I’ve noticed elsewhere, but that’s a matter for another post.
The second scene being reversed in 4x12.a is 2x11.b:
This scene, like 2x10.d, ends with one person leaving the room and the door closing behind them. As in 4x12.a, the son is the one leaving—and 2x11.b is the last scene Frank and Ziggy have together, just as 4x12.a is the last time we see Delonda and Namond together. Furthermore, this:
NAMOND: I’m trying.
DELONDA: You trying, huh? That’s what you gonna tell your father the next time you see him? That you trying? Or you gonna tell him what you’ve done?
is a reversal of:
FRANK: I’m trying. You know I’m trying, right?
But that’s only from the first half of the scene. The second half is reversed later in 4x12.
(Full disclosure: this scene occurs between 4x12.b and 4x12.c, at about the 49 minute mark. Had I planned this post a little better in advance, it would have a separate code—alas, I did not. We’re in the home stretch, though, so hang in there.)
This scene is reversing more than 2x11.b, but that’s a matter for another post.
expresses the same sentiment as what Ziggy says to Frank near the end of 2x11.b:
What Namond says at the beginning of this scene:
NAMOND: I—I can’t go home. She expect me to be my father, but… I ain’t him. I mean, the way he is and shit… it just ain’t in me.
expresses the same sentiment as what Ziggy says to Frank near the end of 2x11.b:
ZIGGY: It ain’t? Because the same blood don’t flow for us, Pop. I mean, I wish it did, but it don’t.
And what Namond says to Cutty immediately after:
NAMOND: [Michael] went hard on this boy last night, fucked his shit up.
expresses the same sentiment as what Ziggy says to Frank right before:
ZIGGY: Pop… when I seen what I did to that kid down at the store, it made me sick to my stomach.
All of this brings us to the scene that follows that one in 4x12.
The above-stated facts have led me to conclude that... this scene, where Bunny receives a text from Carver (which, based on the context, we know is about Namond) is a reversal of 2x11.a. The message is private—unlike the newspaper, which is public—and he’s finding out some portion of the information about Namond’s situation. Just around the corner are the Deacon, who’s there for personal reasons, and Delegate Watkins, whose role is political.
Oh, and one more thing.
Delegate Watkins has a red bumper sticker on his wall that reads, “Mikulski”—referring to Barbara Mikulski, a US Senator who represented the great state of Maryland from 1977 to 2017.
You know, the same Barbara that Frank is referring to here, in 2x01.
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