Indie MCU-inspired Spectral Vision RP Blog / Please read my Rules and Bio / I also share meta, art, fics, and more regarding Marvel's character The Vision in both the MCU and 616 Universes
After watching WandaVision when it aired, I started delving into the interesting and often overlooked history of The Vision, both in the MCU and the comics univereses. I wanted to create a place to role play, share my art, fics, meta, answer asks, and anything else about this character who unexpectedly came to mean the world to me.
Art and Fic Masterlist
Comic Breakdowns Masterlist
White Vision Merch Guide
I also RP my interpretation of Vision on a sidepage, TheSpectralVision-RP, to keep things tidy. If you are interested in RP please check out the link below. All RP posts will be handled from that blog going forward!
Asks are always open! Happy to answer RP/memes/general questions about Vision and the MCU.
* BIO * RP BLOG * MEMES * INBOX *
Thanks for checking this page out! You can find me on Ao3 and Deviant Art under the same name. I’m on Instagram as thespectralvisionart
(This is my Vision/Marvel/MCU sideblog, main blog is JHyena)
there’s a decent amount of talk surrounding the idea that comics, as we know them, are not a particularly good medium for telling cohesive stories. There will be retcons, there will be disagreeing authors and artists, and even the most lovingly crafted and well thought out run will eventually be undercut by something that comes after it, and will likely be undercutting something before it. This is just a fact of the medium, but honestly, it’s one of the things I love about it- because with this contradiction, with it’s indecisiveness, what we end up when a character has been being written for long enough is a portrait that’s… kind of closer to a person, in imitation, than a lot of other mediums can get to? A comic character’s lifespan can include so many small events and conflicting stories and different arcs and hangups, in way that’s very hard to achieve for a character from a play, a movie, even a standalone graphic novel. It’s a level of detail and layeredness that mimics how a person exists. Lives aren’t contained within a single narrative. They’re different people at different times, they have more experiences than any one person could know about. It’s… I don’t know. It’s just one of my favorite things about the genre
Vision has 59 years of stories. His creator Roy Thomas loved him, and was such a joy to hear stories from. Other writers like Steve Englehart also clearly loved the character and his journey. Then after years of being a fairly popular Avenger, John Byrne tried to erase his entire history because he didn’t like the character. Vision has not really recovered from that happening in the late 80s, until we got George Perez and later Tom King who tried to work through some of that, and in most current issues anytime he gets developed they retcon it a few issues later. Love it or hate it, these ups and downs have actually made him feel more human (to me) and more intriguing to read about. Life is going to be full of contradictions and good and bad events happening that are outside of our control so I view the writers of these stories and their opinions as something of an act of god and take the characterization with a grain of salt most days. I pick the data from new stories that best serves my interpretation of the character and ignore the rest as ‘clearly this creator wasn’t very interested in my favorite character.”
It’s also why as much as I love Paul Bettany IN the role and he’s honestly my dream cast for the character, I honestly find MCU’s take on the character rather hollow. He’s only been used as set dressing for the most part, or as a prop in the narrative (needed to stop Ultron in Age of Ultron, needed as the sacrificial lamb in Infinity War, needed as the catalyst for Hayward’s actions and Wanda’s loss of control in WandaVision. Perhaps Vision Quest will remedy this, but I find it hard to accept a show advertising all the new and returning characters will have enough time to actually flesh him out with enough back story to make the audience actually care let alone make him feel like a living character and not a narrative tool. Mr. Bettany always does great with what little the scripts give him (And I’ve heard his venting about working with the Russos and their lack of direction in person) and I honestly believe that if it were not for him in the role that the character would get any notice at all in the MCU machine.
My entire thing is hoping to one day write stories about Vision, but I also know from being a fandom creator how controversial that gets very quickly. I can only imagine as a professional comic writer/artist how difficult balancing all of this must be. That said I wish the studios would let creatives make stories about characters they are actually interested in and passionate about instead of hiring big names who obviously want to make something else.
“I can see myself not acting at the pace I currently am, only doing things I really, really want to do. But that day is not upon us. I still really love it. I still find it exciting. Not that I can’t imagine hanging up my acting tights at one point or another. I can. Pottering around some farmhouse? Yes, I can imagine that.”
I did a study from one of Paul’s photos (the one he liked my comment on, naturally)) with hopes of gifting it to him last weekend at GalaxyCon OKC. Sadly he had to cancel the week of due to a filming conflict, so I’m posting it today.
Timelapse of most of the painting under the cut because I finally decided to try recording one.
The secret to a happy life is…
Paul: “Having a partner who is your best friend, your super friend. I think about this the whole time. Like, if something funny happens to me, first person I want to tell is Jennifer, if something bad happens to me, first person I want to tell is Jennifer.”
At the Morgan Library’s Mozart exhibition, Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany dish on playing classical music’s most notorious rivals, on Starz’s
Poor Antonio Salieri. In other circumstances, history (or, at least, classical-music buffs) would remember him as Kapellmeister to the Emperor of Austria, a skilled court composer of some forty operas, and a mentor to Beethoven and Schubert. But he had the rotten luck of being eclipsed by a younger rival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Despite evidence that the two got along well enough, rumors spread in Vienna after Mozart’s death that Salieri had poisoned him. In 1979, the myth of Salieri’s malicious envy inspired Peter Shaffer’s play “Amadeus,” which cast Mozart as a spunky wunderkind and Salieri as the scheming “patron saint of mediocrities.”
Salieri’s bad rap was solidified in 1984, when Miloš Forman turned “Amadeus” into an Oscar-winning film. Now comes a sumptuous five-part miniseries, which aired on British television last year and has just come to Starz, with Will Sharpe as Mozart and Paul Bettany as Salieri. The other day, both actors found themselves at the Morgan Library & Museum, in midtown. Sharpe, known for his roles on “The White Lotus” and “Too Much,” had his hair gelled into a rock-star shag; Bettany, a fixture of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wore hip glasses and a leather jacket. Their stop in New York happened to coincide with the Morgan’s exhibition “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Treasures from the Mozarteum Foundation of Salzburg.” Many of the artifacts were visiting the United States for the first time.
The actors were greeted by the exhibition’s curator, Robin McClellan, who led them to Mozart’s childhood violin, encased in glass. “We had a nine-year-old prodigy from Juilliard come and play it,” he said. Across the hall was Mozart’s clavichord, on which he wrote the Requiem. “He was composing on his deathbed,” McClellan continued.
“Is it true that he swelled up like a balloon at the end of his life?” Sharpe asked.
“That’s your favorite bit?” Bettany teased. Both actors mimed inflating like balloons.
Past the violin was an oil painting of the child Mozart entertaining nobles at the Maison du Temple. “Is this really annoying, that there isn’t a Salieri exhibition?” Sharpe ribbed his co-star.
“I’m hoping to undermine this one,” Bettany retorted.
They paused by a portrait of young Mozart at his keyboard, in a bright-red jacket. (“He loved fancy clothing,” McClellan said.) In “Amadeus,” Sharpe wears lots of red, while Bettany wears cooler colors. “There was one red look I liked in particular,” Sharpe recalled. “At one point, I was, like, ‘Can I just wear this all the time, for simplicity?’ ”
“Laziest actor you’ve ever met,” Bettany deadpanned. Nearby were manuscripts of nine symphonies that Mozart wrote within two years, in his late teens. Bettany snapped photos. “My son’s a composer”—Stellan Connelly Bettany, his older child with the actress Jennifer Connelly, is at the Royal College of Music—“and he’s only written one symphony this year!”
They passed the clavichord, which still had ink stains on it, presumably from late nights at the keyboard. Neither actor has had much musical experience. Bettany, as a London teen, used to busk by Westminster Pier. “You would get very adept at profiling people,” he said. “Oh, they’re French. I’m going to play the Cure! Because the Cure was huge in France.”
Sharpe, also a native Londoner, was in a garage band with his brother, originally called Phosphene—the term for sparks of light you see with your eyes closed. (“Awful name,” Sharpe admitted.) For “Amadeus,” the actors practiced piano for months before filming, in Hungary. “Then, when we got to Budapest, we were playing on fortepianos, where the keys are quite a bit smaller, so suddenly it got doubly difficult again,” Sharpe recalled, eying Mozart’s keys.
Viewing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, from 1785, McClellan said, “I’ll just mention my quibble with your series, for what it’s worth: the manuscripts didn’t look like the actual manuscripts.” He turned sheepish. “I’m not trying to be a jerk.”
“To clarify, Will and I didn’t make them,” Bettany said.
They reached a tiny, oval-shaped engraving of Salieri. Finally! “So, you couldn’t find a smaller one?” Bettany said. He was feeling defensive. Salieri’s own Requiem was “pretty good,” he noted. “He was also a mensch. He really supported young musicians.”
“I confess to a slight Mozart bias in the choice of materials in the show,” McClellan offered. Past Mozart’s wallet and walking stick, they arrived at a display addressing the Salieri myth. There was an illustrated edition of Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 play “Mozart and Salieri”; the score of a Rimsky-Korsakov opera based on it; and an “Amadeus” poster signed by F. Murray Abraham, who played Salieri in the film. “We had him here for a private event, and he made sure to let everyone know that he did not kill Mozart,” McClellan said.
“What makes Salieri a great antagonist is that he’s eminently relatable,” Bettany said. “There are few geniuses, but there’s a lot of mediocrity around. Every office in the world has a Salieri.”
“We should have an exhibition celebrating mediocrity in all its guises,” McClellan proposed.
Bettany grinned: “I’ll host it!” ♦Published in the print edition of the May 25, 2026, issue, with the headline “Second Fiddle.”
collider: Paul Bettany and Will Sharpe share their favourite Amadeus moments in this Collider Behind The Scenes feature 🎭
screenrant: Paul Bettany addresses rumored Voldemort casting for HBO's upcoming Harry Potter series ⚡️🪄
optimum: Paul Bettany talks new STARZ show Amadeus and how he prefers to stream.
Will Sharpe and Paul Bettany reimagine history’s most intoxicating rivalry in Amadeus, watch the series premiere Friday, 5/8 on starz.
optimum: Paul Bettany shares how he stayed connected to his family while filming the new STARZ show Amadeus. Watch the series now on starz.
Matthew Rhys and Paul Bettany attend the 2026 Lincoln Center Spring Gala at Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center on May 18, 2026 in New York City.
