#mind you they’re doing all this over MAGNETO 💀

[duncneydivorce]

This did NOT happen 😭😭😭

That’s what I get for putting so much faith in Orlando 🤦‍♂️. Instead we are getting more HOM revisionism, more character assassination and more scapegoating. Why are we regressing Pietro to a state that was never even in character in the first place? Why are we rewriting Wanda’s entire characterisation? Why are we straight up lying about their relationship with Magneto?

I don’t mind when the twins fight but it’s frustrating that half the time it’s not even in character and says absolutely nothing of value about them at all! They’re fighting over shit that didn’t even happen because for as much as everyone loves talking about HOM no one has seemed to have even read the damn story.

I don’t understand what Orlando is trying to say about Wanda here.. no she doesn’t think her brother is a manipulative sociopath, no she didn’t give a shit about Magneto and I find it hard to believe she would do something like burn the letter in the first place. It’s just so unlike her she’s never done anything like that before, I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe it could work but the writing completely missed the mark for me. Why are we adding flaws that are ooc to Wanda instead of talking about the ones she already has?

It’s not like Wanda doesn’t have flaws and hasn’t made hurtful mistakes with her brother but breaking a boundary like that is more in line with Pietro’s past tendencies. Doing something like this, especially after confronting Pietro over it and the two of them have meaningfully reconciled already, just makes her seem like an unnecessary hypocrite.

Wanda’s problem was that she would try to placate him and wouldn’t take his side when he was the one being wronged in the scenario and was rightfully critical of it.

This was a matter of projecting her self destructive and repressive coping mechanisms onto Pietro, whose restlessness already made himself into a social pariah and was a threat to the very precarious position they had assimilated into. Wanda’s history struggling with repression is the reason why she struggled the way she did with her powers, and why she often lost autonomy to greater mystical forces. Why did Wanda struggle with repressing herself? Because she was FORCED to in order to protect herself. While the Busiek run is flawed in its execution it shows that a Wanda who has the space and means to openingly celebrate her identity and grieve on her own terms is a Wanda who is confident, in control and fully capable of mastering her abilities against all odds.

If you want to talk about Wanda’s greatest character flaws, her struggle with her powers and her missteps with Pietro then you absolutely MUST understand this.

The most frustrating part about all of this is that we’ve already told this story. HOM set the twins backwards so badly that they have to go through character arcs they’ve already been through decades ago, and yet somehow, more than 20 years later people STILL can’t get it right.

The upcoming Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver series includes a promising bit in the preview that I have a lot of thoughts about:

“Above all, they are twins who look out for each other. So when Wanda receives a letter from the recently deceased Magneto that would upset Pietro, she burns the letter before her brother can read it.

But her choice drives them apart at the worst possible time”

It seems this series is going to take a more unconventional route where Wanda creates conflict between the two. Not that I think this is OOC, on the contrary, I think it’s a very interesting and often overlooked part of their relationship.

Pietro was always more imposing and vocal about it, but Wanda is equally as protective of her brother as he is of her. And she has made mistakes for this too just as he has.

But before I can go any further into that we need context.

After surviving a childhood of extreme racism and their saviour’s indoctrination (who also turned them into highly profiled criminals), the twins find themselves at the mercy of public opinion. Cap’s Kooky Quartet may have saved them from being convicted, but it’s not enough for them to simply do superhero work, they must earn the mantle of superhero (the idea of what makes someone a superhero and who get the be the verdict is already a very loaded notion that I won’t expand on but it’s worth being conscious of this here). In order to be accepted the twins are essentially marketed as the ‘American Dream’; a couple of impoverished immigrants who worked their way up to success, a pair of misguided misfits who needed the guidance of the all American Captain America. Their relationship with Steve IS meaningful and important to their ability to become heroes but it’s not because he ‘turned them around’, rather by simply giving them accommodation, resources and opportunities they’ve never had access to in their lives. But that’s not what the majority see, to them the Maximoff’s are a rehabilitation project that’s a testament to their society’s benevolence. It's a similar kind of rancid vibe as those mission trips in Africa. They are tokenized and tolerated only when the narrative forced on them feeds the white superamcist ego.

And most importantly, this tolerance is completely conditional.

While the two do have genuine fondness for their time on the team, their livelihood as Avengers cannot be divorced from this groundwork. In fact, multiple Avengers stories from their early days delve into the complicated relationship they have with this fact (and no this is not an ‘Avengers are cops’ rhetoric, joining the Avengers literally saved them from a more punitive judgement from the criminal justice system).

When Pietro voices very real concerns about this we see Wanda undermine him. When he learns of his wife’s infidelity her first reaction is to convince him to forgive her and move on. There’s another moment and for the life of me I can’t find the panel but after some brief reflection Wanda admits she may have been rash to dismiss Pietro as fanatic.

All of this does come from her love and protectiveness for her brother but it also comes from a very real trauma and fear.

Before I go on let me clarify, Wanda has never been a self hating minority. I mean the whole reason she called herself Scarlet Witch is because she was reclaiming a stereotype her persecutors used against her. Nor has she ever been an obedient damsel without independence. Since her very debut she has been a character with agency, while Pietro can be chauvinistic at times her relationship with her brother has always been the one of equals, and fighting for her autonomy (usually against literal demons) is one of the major recurring themes in her evolution.

That being said, it’s worth examining the conflicting self-repression that’s followed Wanda since the very beginning. She and pietro both understandably reacted in extremes and where he grew abrasive and restless, she could show a tendency to something akin to a model minority complex at times (remember her livelihood literally depended on advertising her as one at a certain point). There is room for a longer and more thorough analysis on this but to keep it brief and to the point I want to highlight specifically the way she has projected this onto Pietro. Again, the both of them have made their own mistakes, hurt themselves, each other and others for this, but while we have seen stories allow growth for pietro’s mistreatment towards Wanda over this, the inverse has been mostly forgotten. Until now it seems.

Wanda and Pietro have come a very long way and I trust Orlando to treat Wanda as a character who has made mistakes and who’s flaws lie in her compassion. His run was heavily dedicated to acknowledging the harm her actions have done to others in the past without letting it hold her back and acknowledging how she was victimised in those situations. What I’m more sceptical of is his understanding of where that trauma comes from, because there was no meaningful examination of this so far. Wanda is a displaced refugee with violent experiences of racism and poverty. The Avengers was more than a team to her, it was a sanctuary. An extremely precarious one. She was also like.. a teenager when this was thrusted on her. It’s completely reasonable that as she grew into herself she would struggle with respectability politics and would project this onto her brother who’s indignation often isolated himself.

I’m not expecting Orlando to write critical race theory or anything but since it seems an important part of the story will lie in addressing this particular contention between the twins then personally I feel what will make or break this series will be whether Orlando can communicate this. We know he’s AWARE of their heritage and origin and is consciously trying to include it in how they are represented in his work so I’m choosing to be optimistic but I guess only time will tell.