About

What Is Grief If Not Love Persevering is a line from episode 8 of WandaVision, titled "Previously On." The line became a point of controversy among social media users, as some fans of the series lavished it with praise (inspiring the A Reverent 'Fuck' meme) while others thought it was overhyped. As the conversation about the line continued well after the episode aired, it was parodied as a snowclone with the template "What is X if not Y persevering?"

Origin

On February 26th, 2021, during the 8th episode of WandaVision,^[1] Vision says the line, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" (shown below).

The line was celebrated by fans of the show, and particularly by user @MadHat31, who tweeted, "Do you hear that sound? It’s every screenwriter in the world whispering a reverent “FUCK” under their breath." This inspired parodies of the tweet, launching the "A Reverent 'Fuck'" meme. Amidst parodies of the high praise given to the line by Marvel fans, Twitter users began parodying the line itself as a snowclone. One of the earliest popular examples was tweeted by user @DanSpenser,^[2] who gained over 8,500 retweets and 92,000 likes with his February 28th parody of the line (shown below).

Spread

Over the following several days, people parodied the line by either replacing words in the screenshot (a la I Am Going To Create An Environment That Is So Toxic) and posting their own tweets using the line as a snowclone. Of the former category, popular tweets include a March 1st, 2021 post by @Steph_I_Will^[3] that gained over 30,000 retweets and 179,000 likes (shown below, left) and a tweet by @jonnysun^[4] that gained over 77,000 likes (shown below, right).

Popular tweets that used the line as a snowclone template include a March 2nd tweet by @dvdpeters^[5] that gained over 23,000 retweets and 183,000 likes (shown below, left) and a March 1st tweet by @zachsilberberg^[6] that gained over 11,000 retweets and 172,000 likes (shown below, right). The jokes were covered by Junkee.^[7]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References