"CHAOS Magic Woman!" Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff Appreciation 2022

[MaximoffTrash]

If Wanda was possessed/corrupted by the Darkhold, would that affect your view of her culpability?

Sure, but it still robs her of agency and fed her another tiring trope.

[MaximoffTrash]

Or, as is often the case with serialized media like comics, characterization changes and shifts over time. I realize there are a lot of people who are really passionately committed to being stuck in the past re: Wanda's characterization (across adaptations), but it seems like...stressing yourself out unnecessarily. Those old Avengers comics haven't gone anywhere.

You cannot seriously call whatever AD/HoM Wanda had as a "characterization".
It's not about being stuck in the past, not if your future is literally being the textbook example of bunch of misogynistic tropes glued together.

Wanda fans want her old and more heroic characterization because the other option is giving up and let the disease win.
You are essentially asking the fans to accept the tumor that is AD/HoM to be the new her. Something that is a small part of her and is actively killing her character.

[GenericUsername]

Or, as is often the case with serialized media like comics, characterization changes and shifts over time. I realize there are a lot of people who are really passionately committed to being stuck in the past re: Wanda's characterization (across adaptations), but it seems like...stressing yourself out unnecessarily. Those old Avengers comics haven't gone anywhere.

No here's the thing though. They never really pull her into the characterization that you or others accuse her of having. Because they'll have her do stuff that counters who she is all the time. It goes back and forth and the continuity of the character doesn't line up with things before. And it'd be a lot easier to say, this is who she is now if she was always that. But she's not.

It's not being stuck in the past. It's that even in current comics, they haven't done what you think they've done. It's only those two comics that it's like that.

And also why should anyone resort to, it's ok to portray my favorite character in the most sexist and sometimes racist way possible? That's odd to tell people. Just accept that some things are problematic and shouldn't change because some other people actually like that stuff.

[gurkle]

If Wanda was possessed/corrupted by the Darkhold, would that affect your view of her culpability?

I mean either way the culprit is "bad writing." Either way it's a waste of the character, which is what really has us so disappointed.

I guess I hope they define it as possession because that at least makes it possible to use her later, but it should never have come to that. She should have teamed up with Strange and if they wanted to do a story about her going dark, save it for her own story, where it could be a tragedy instead of a cheap shock like Avengers Disassembled and... whatever the hell this is.

[GenericUsername]

It doesn't even feel like Disassembled because that was her possessed and turning her back on her own team she had worked with for decades. This movie has people she's either never met or barely knows. And she might not be possessed, it might not be her, we have no idea really.

[Force de Phenix]

[...]if your future is literally being the textbook example of bunch of misogynistic tropes glued together. [...] Something that is a small part of her and is actively killing her character.

If this is true, why bother spending any money or consume anything Marvel produces? If Marvel is saying, "this is who the character is," why not just abandon their media and products?

[GenericUsername]

You cannot seriously call whatever AD/HoM Wanda had as a "characterization".
It's not about being stuck in the past, not if your future is literally being the textbook example of bunch of misogynistic tropes glued together.

Wanda fans want her old and more heroic characterization because the other option is giving up and let the disease win.
You are essentially asking the fans to accept the tumor that is AD/HoM to be the new her. Something that is a small part of her and is actively killing her character.

People will call for her death as a character until it happens. Then realize what went wrong when it's too late.

[MaximoffTrash]

Either way, it's a freaking waste.
And all the fans can do is wait, wait until the movie is out, wait until the characters recover from whatever the crap they are put through. Wait for another decade for another chance like MCU.

[GenericUsername]

If this is true, why bother spending any money or consume anything Marvel produces? If Marvel is saying, "this is who the character is," why not just abandon their media and products?

Because that's not what it is, is what MaximoffTrash is saying. People like to reduce Wanda down to two books that the general populous knows of. But in reality she's way more than that. If they do actually do that in the MCU then it'll probably be easier to just let go and leave Marvel in the dust. But resigning to that and saying well that's just what the character is now is a different thing. Because we don't know that she is, and despite the post before that they were replying to, Wanda hasn't changed with the times. It's just people think she is the sum of a couple parts.

[gurkle]

If this is true, why bother spending any money or consume anything Marvel produces? If Marvel is saying, "this is who the character is," why not just abandon their media and products?

The thing is, they've never actually committed to her being that way. We just had her acting perfectly in-character in WandaVision, and the comics just had her acting perfectly in-character in the Darkhold comic. So they do get our hopes up that they will respect the character and then they take it all back, or (in the comics) they just don't bother to use her at all.

What you're seeing from MaximoffTrash and me and others is that we feel we should quit the fandom because it's so painful having our hopes dashed, but we can't let go of hope because we do sometimes get to see the character we like. Just not consistently.

Why would they make her so popular doing a show where Wanda acts like Wanda, and seemingly throw that all away for cheap scares? It makes no sense, but that's what has us so down, her treatment never makes sense. If it did she'd be in comics now and she'd be teaming up with Strange in the MCU.

[MaximoffTrash]

If this is true, why bother spending any money or consume anything Marvel produces? If Marvel is saying, "this is who the character is," why not just abandon their media and products?

Ah, what? I am pretty sure not everyone gets the AD/HoM treatment. As a matter of fact, few characters are actually only ever defined by the overrated worst pieces of their stories.
Shocking I know.

[GenericUsername]

Or that we just aren't gonna resign to shrugging over sexist depictions and her being thrown into the fridge like she was in comics. It'd be cowardly to not speak up against that. If that is what they are doing.

[LordUltimus]

I'm pretty sure part of calling something out is done is so that the people who made it and try to make up for it. Like how Bruce/Natasha got heavily downplayed and how the Mandarin was given a do-over.

[GenericUsername]

I'm pretty sure part of calling something out is done is so that the people who made it and try to make up for it. Like how Bruce/Natasha got heavily downplayed and how the Mandarin was given a do-over.

Yes, and some of us don't want Wanda being stuck in the rut of the sexist stories told about her in the 2000s. An era where the word fridging was first coined because of comics' issues.

[gurkle]

I'm pretty sure part of calling something out is done is so that the people who made it and try to make up for it. Like how Bruce/Natasha got heavily downplayed and how the Mandarin was given a do-over.

Yeah, exactly. People who claim to be Wanda fans should not be cheering this on. It will never get fixed if Disney thinks everyone loves it.

Note, I'm not talking about what people are saying right now, because the movie isn't out yet. I'm saying that if the movie just makes her a psycho baby-crazy lady, then the worst thing fans could do would be to cheer her on no matter what she does. Because that makes it a little more likely that the character will be unusable like in the comics.

Backlash is really the only weapon we have, and if a character does out-of-character things the only thing we can do is blame the writers and demand they fix their mistake.