Wanda Maximoff: Scarlet Witch Appreciation 2020

[GenericUsername]

I wasn’t trying to say she was violent because of her mental issues. What I meant is there was an underlying problem, and the possession made her deal with that problem in an uncharacteristic way. So yes, you are correct that Wanda as her normal self wouldn’t do those things, but that doesn’t erase the underlying problem that was already there. Like I pointed out, Doctor Doom was possessed by the same force as Wanda, so why was he able to maintain his sanity when she couldn’t? She was obviously going through something that he wasn’t. I don’t remember when exactly she was specifically diagnosed with depression, and I prefer not to get into the diagnosing game here anyway ‘cause I’m definitely not qualified enough (and neither are most Marvel writers, honestly) to pin a specific illness/disease to a character, but my point stands: I do think Wanda was written as someone who was struggling with mental issues, specially during the AD/HOM period. Even if you wanna argue she had “just” depression, that’s still a mental health disorder, as far as I’m concerned, so I don’t see how that negates that she was mentally ill. I’m not saying it was all well written and positively represented (it definitely wasn’t with Bendis), but I do think that was the intention.

As for her interaction with Pietro on her book: I remember she quite literally told him she wasn’t ok in the head and went on to describe some typical symptoms associated with mental health issues. If that wasn’t James Robinson trying to not so subtly tell us she was mentally troubled, I don’t know what it was.

Doom didn't maintain his sanity. He killed Cassie! He was mad with power.

Wanda was rewritten as someone who was baby crazy, that's it. There was nothing genuine about that depiction. She did suffer from the loss of Vision and her sons. She went through the grieving period. During that time Immortus had been manipulating her as well. So tacking on manipulation and possession as equaling mental illness is not correct here. Because after both instances she was back to normal magically. And as someone with Generalized Panic Disorder with Depression, I can tell you, that's not how it works. It doesn't go away magically. You have better days and worse days but it's always there. To the point where it impacts me physically. So no this was not a depiction of mental illness. It was an insensitive, sexist hack. The intention wasn't to depict mental illness anyway or they'd have had her diagnosed and had better people treating her. The intention was to work out a mandate. And she was the plot device.

She had depression. She was sad about everything that's happened, some that she's responsible for. That doesn't in anyway lead to what she did in AD/HoM. Just like depression doesn't lead me to doing extreme stuff that hurts others. The type of "mentally troubled" that you are trying to peg on her doesn't match up with what's in the books or what is true for depression.

[Probability010]

[...]
As for her interaction with Pietro on her book: I remember she quite literally told him she wasn’t ok in the head and went on to describe some typical symptoms associated with mental health issues. If that wasn’t James Robinson trying to not so subtly tell us she was mentally troubled, I don’t know what it was.

I’m pretty sure Robinson meant that Wanda had depression *afterwards*. Which makes sense to me, it was a loss off control, an all in all traumatic experience. But it says nothing about Wanda’s mental state before or during AD, HoM.

My main gripe here is that during the entire run Robinson only mentions the depression, but its effects were never shown. In every single issue of that run Wanda could motivate herself to do what she wanted to do. I don’t think that’s how depression works.

Doom didn't maintain his sanity. He killed Cassie! He was mad with power.
[...]

My thoughts exactly. Some Doom-Fans call Self-Defense, but I don’t by it, as in that state he was almost invulnerable. Although, I don’t think Doom is a sane person to begin with, so the difference is hard to tell.

[GenericUsername]

It really depends on the day. You get days where are really energized to do things, and then days where you are tired and drained. Somedays in between. I agree that her diagnosis of depression doesn't fit the character's actions. Maybe a temporary bout, but not the disorder.

But also, comics haven't really been great at depicting mental illness at all. I think the closest was Waid's Daredevil. The others all either don't depict the right symptoms to go with the diagnosis, or don't diagnose. Just call them "crazy" and make it why they are now doing evil things.

[Agent Z]

Wanda made number 2 on Mr Top Ten List's "Top Ten Characters With Luck Powers"

@12:39

[Frontier]

Wanda made number 2 on Mr Top Ten List's "Top Ten Characters With Luck Powers"

@12:39

And sometimes writers don't even remember she has luck powers .

[Cruelrain]

Wanda made number 2 on Mr Top Ten List's "Top Ten Characters With Luck Powers"

@12:39

I hate when people ignore her magic powers since she trained with Agatha a full Witch

Also currently is canon that Wanda comes from a caste of witches, and with the blessing Chthon, she Born with magic

[Cruelrain]

And sometimes writers don't even remember she has luck powers .

Ins't probability manipulation like luck powers anyways

I have to admit that i always Loved how some Marvel fans never know what Wanda's powers are magic,mutant based etc

But now is mutated with magic

[GenericUsername]

The luck powers thing was written out a while ago. So it's not that they don't remember it. It's that they changed her abilities.

[Cruelrain]

[Probability010]

Well, I found that way to Vision-centric, considering the title suggest it is about both off them. The only good thing I found about it, is that it managed to narrowly move around the whole AD, HoM stuff. Also I found near the ending quite inaccurate: “… were dismantled for harming humans”. Humans were harmed by them, sure, but that’s not what happened.

[GenericUsername]

Yeah, it was basically about Vision's family tree. Which is fine, but the title is misleading.

[Drops Of Venus]

I’m pretty sure the title of the video is just clickbait to promote WandaVision. Either way, it was a pretty cool video.

BTW, Steve Orlando tweeted about Avengers: Children’s Crusade being among his homework for Darkhold, so I’m definitely expecting some references to the events of that book.

Doom didn't maintain his sanity. He killed Cassie! He was mad with power.

Wanda was rewritten as someone who was baby crazy, that's it. There was nothing genuine about that depiction. She did suffer from the loss of Vision and her sons. She went through the grieving period. During that time Immortus had been manipulating her as well. So tacking on manipulation and possession as equaling mental illness is not correct here. Because after both instances she was back to normal magically. And as someone with Generalized Panic Disorder with Depression, I can tell you, that's not how it works. It doesn't go away magically. You have better days and worse days but it's always there. To the point where it impacts me physically. So no this was not a depiction of mental illness. It was an insensitive, sexist hack. The intention wasn't to depict mental illness anyway or they'd have had her diagnosed and had better people treating her. The intention was to work out a mandate. And she was the plot device.

She had depression. She was sad about everything that's happened, some that she's responsible for. That doesn't in anyway lead to what she did in AD/HoM. Just like depression doesn't lead me to doing extreme stuff that hurts others. The type of "mentally troubled" that you are trying to peg on her doesn't match up with what's in the books or what is true for depression.

There’s no evidence Doom was insane. I’m not trying to excuse his actions here, but him killing Cassie was very obviously a reaction after she attacked him. He should’ve measured his force in that scenario, but it was still a reaction and not a deliberate, premeditated action. His goal there was not to kill people, otherwise he could’ve easily done that when he got the Life Force. He only killed someone after a fight escalated and he was attacked. Cassie was collateral damage, unfortunately. When he got to become God during Secret Wars, he wasn’t acting that much differently, if you ask me, so I’m inclined to believe that that’s just who he is, possessed or not. So no, I don’t think his behavior was similar to Wanda.

As for everything else, you’re missing the point here. Again: this is not about whether you think it was a good representation or not. Like I said, I don’t even think it was good, and yeah, I agree that a proper, genuine representation of mental illness should be done with a lot more care, but that’s the thing: it was just not that kind of representation. The way that I see it, Bendis just wanted to weaponize mental illness because he thought that made for a cool story. And there absolutely were signs of that, or are we all just forgetting that Wanda was literally suffering from hallucinations during AD, seeing her children and Agatha? She was clearly portrayed as someone who was losing her grip of reality. That is not something that you write if you want the readers to think a character is mentally stable. And in that case, you can’t even use the possession excuse for the writer, because it wasn’t canon back then. It wasn’t canon for years, which is why I don’t think it was the sole motivation behind that story.

Now that I think about it, we did get a moment in Robinson’s Scarlet Witch that could point to her still having hallucination episodes: I think it was in the same issue where she goes to therapy, and we see her playing with her kids in the end, which were obviously not real. I never really understood why James wrote that, but just saying, it could be a sign that she’s still not completely over some of her past demons and they weren’t just magically erased after she stopped being possessed.

[GenericUsername]

I’m pretty sure the title of the video is just clickbait to promote WandaVision. Either way, it was a pretty cool video.

BTW, Steve Orlando tweeted about Avengers: Children’s Crusade being among his homework for Darkhold, so I’m definitely expecting some references to the events of that book.



There’s no evidence Doom was insane. I’m not trying to excuse his actions here, but him killing Cassie was very obviously a reaction after she attacked him. He should’ve measured his force in that scenario, but it was still a reaction and not a deliberate, premeditated action. His goal there was not to kill people, otherwise he could’ve easily done that when he got the Life Force. He only killed someone after a fight escalated and he was attacked. Cassie was collateral damage, unfortunately. When he got to become God during Secret Wars, he wasn’t acting that much differently, if you ask me, so I’m inclined to believe that that’s just who he is, possessed or not. So no, I don’t think his behavior was similar to Wanda.

As for everything else, you’re missing the point here. Again: this is not about whether you think it was a good representation or not. Like I said, I don’t even think it was good, and yeah, I agree that a proper, genuine representation of mental illness should be done with a lot more care, but that’s the thing: it was just not that kind of representation. The way that I see it, Bendis just wanted to weaponize mental illness because he thought that made for a cool story. And there absolutely were signs of that, or are we all just forgetting that Wanda was literally suffering from hallucinations during AD, seeing her children and Agatha? She was clearly portrayed as someone who was losing her grip of reality. That is not something that you write if you want the readers to think a character is mentally stable. And in that case, you can’t even use the possession excuse for the writer, because it wasn’t canon back then. It wasn’t canon for years, which is why I don’t think it was the sole motivation behind that story.

Now that I think about it, we did get a moment in Robinson’s Scarlet Witch that could point to her still having hallucination episodes: I think it was in the same issue where she goes to therapy, and we see her playing with her kids in the end, which were obviously not real. I never really understood why James wrote that, but just saying, it could be a sign that she’s still not completely over some of her past demons and they weren’t just magically erased after she stopped being possessed.

He was murderous. Of a child, which he didn't usually do. So yeah he did something out of character for even someone like him. And it definitely showed him going out of control with power, which is really what Wanda did.

It's entirely about if it's accurate. Because otherwise it's not portraying mental illness at all. Again, they never diagnosed, never properly treated. She doesn't hallucinate otherwise, so yeah, that was the life force. No, it went from "baby crazy" to possessed. So neither represent mental illness at all. The possession was only to correct how her powers work. They weren't even thinking of how or what it did for any mental illness depiction. You are trying to tell me you can read something into it that isn't there. Because they never tried to depict a story about mental illness. They just tried to get rid of the old Avengers and mutants.

She wasn't hallucinating when she was talking about her children. She was just visualizing them there. Again, in the story, it never depicts it as that. I'm not into fanon being interjected here. It's just not what was there.

If they ever do a legit story about mental illness, I'm all for it. But pretending that was there is just nonsense. She was manipulated by Immortus and possessed by the life force. She's also been possessed by Chthon. That's what's in the books.

[Witchfan]

WandaVision cosplayers
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[leokearon]

Very well done