More on Wanda
Sep. 18th, 2016 07:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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So, while I was wondering how the hell I’m going to fit MCU Wanda into SLR without everyone totally avoiding her, I started thinking about how I would have written Wanda in MCU, dealing with the no mutants limitations and still keeping her as a character we can sympathise with and who’s redemption we can believe.
So, without further ado- presenting new and improved MCU Wanda!
Number one: no HYDRA. No, I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t care how hot Brock Rumlow is. HYDRA are a gang of psychotic neo nazis who mindrape people. The only people who can be defended for working for them are the brainwashed victims (ie Bucky).
So instead, Wanda will be working for the Sokovian People’s Front (not to be mistaken for the People’s Front of Sokovia), a group of freedom fighters/terrorists who are fighting to free Sokovia from an occupying nation- the initial invasion was the cause of the twin’s parent’s deaths.
(and if we’re getting a bit of a Russia/Ukraine conflict vibe here? Good.)
Number two: Wanda and Pietro have their powers from birth. It’s way too good plot dynamic to let go, even if we can’t use the word mutant. Maybe their mother was exposed to radiation when she was pregnant with them (again, giving us Chenobyl/Ukraine vibes) but either way they were born with powers and developed them over adolescence. Maybe even using them for the first time in the bomb attack that killed their parents. It will mention that they’ve always been outcasts as much due to their powers as to their Jewish/Romani heritage.
So Wanda and Pietro have been used by this band of well intentioned extremists to free their country from a very shitty occupying force. Atrocities are happening but the UN and the world at large just doesn’t want to know. We get a scene of attacks from not!Russia on a village, and the SPF retaliating violently- and innocents being caught in the crossfire. Wanda and Pietro are obviously uncomfortable with this, but don’t feel they have any other recourse.
Then the Avengers come in, looking for HYDRA. Wanda and Pietro now have a very understandable grudge against the Avengers- they have been happily ignoring all the horrible shit going down in Sokovia, and now feel they can just swan in and blow up even more of their country just because they can? The SPF send them in to fight the Avengers partially to win PR (Sokovia is not happy with the Avengers, as we see in the beginning of AoU) but also to show off how powerful their two ‘assets’ are.
Which brings us to point number 3- no mind control. Instead, Wanda and Pietro absolutely wipe the floor with the Avengers. Wanda in particular is shown to be very, very powerful, able to use how powers and control probability to the point where the unprepared Avengers are forced into a fighting retreat. Tony takes the scepter and makes Ultron not because Wanda mind-fucked him, but because he’s terrified if they go up against the twins again, they’re all going to die.
And finally, part 4- Ultron. Ultron doesn’t offer the twins revenge on the Avengers- he’s offering them the liberation of their country. He’s promising that if they side with him against the Avengers, he’ll make sure not!Russia are thrown out.
So this is basically happening while the Avengers are doing various movie things (instead of mindfucking the Hulk, Wanda takes him on a full throw down, drag out fight in Jo’burg, both of them so intent on ending each other they don’t notice the damage they’ve done. When Wanda sees the mess they’ve made, she is clearly shaken and horrified)
However, when she goes back to Sokovia, she sees that while the Ultron controlled Iron legion have thrown out not’Russian forces, the SPF haven’t been any better. there are mass executions, slaughters of not!Russian supporting villages, the extermination of the People’s Front of Sokovia, the works.
She turns to Ultron to get him to stop this mess. But Ultron just shrugs and goes, ‘whateves dude, you’re all going extinct today’. Then the rest of the movie pretty much plays out as canon. Wanda sides with the Avengers against Ultrers, Pietro dies, most of Sokovia is trashed.
This not only make Wanda a more likable character by removing her more egregious crimes (siding with Hydra and mind rape) and villainous motivations ( freeing your country is a hell of a lot more likable than random murder), but also sets the scene for Civil War for more intriguingly.
The Avengers have seen what happens when they follow the UN- a UN which had no problem letting a country get completely trashed as they quibbled over semantics (coughRwandacough) but at the same time, they see the problem of not having oversight- the SPF were just as bad as not!Russia. This gives both sides valuable points and would make both Cap’s side and Wanda’s decision to join him waaay mroe relevant and compelling than…. well, what we got.
So, in summary, likable flawed-but-redeemable Wanda, and sensible Civil war lead up.
So, while I was wondering how the hell I’m going to fit MCU Wanda into SLR without everyone totally avoiding her, I started thinking about how I would have written Wanda in MCU, dealing with the no mutants limitations and still keeping her as a character we can sympathise with and who’s redemption we can believe.
So, without further ado- presenting new and improved MCU Wanda!
Number one: no HYDRA. No, I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t care how hot Brock Rumlow is. HYDRA are a gang of psychotic neo nazis who mindrape people. The only people who can be defended for working for them are the brainwashed victims (ie Bucky).
So instead, Wanda will be working for the Sokovian People’s Front (not to be mistaken for the People’s Front of Sokovia), a group of freedom fighters/terrorists who are fighting to free Sokovia from an occupying nation- the initial invasion was the cause of the twin’s parent’s deaths.
(and if we’re getting a bit of a Russia/Ukraine conflict vibe here? Good.)
Number two: Wanda and Pietro have their powers from birth. It’s way too good plot dynamic to let go, even if we can’t use the word mutant. Maybe their mother was exposed to radiation when she was pregnant with them (again, giving us Chenobyl/Ukraine vibes) but either way they were born with powers and developed them over adolescence. Maybe even using them for the first time in the bomb attack that killed their parents. It will mention that they’ve always been outcasts as much due to their powers as to their Jewish/Romani heritage.
So Wanda and Pietro have been used by this band of well intentioned extremists to free their country from a very shitty occupying force. Atrocities are happening but the UN and the world at large just doesn’t want to know. We get a scene of attacks from not!Russia on a village, and the SPF retaliating violently- and innocents being caught in the crossfire. Wanda and Pietro are obviously uncomfortable with this, but don’t feel they have any other recourse.
Then the Avengers come in, looking for HYDRA. Wanda and Pietro now have a very understandable grudge against the Avengers- they have been happily ignoring all the horrible shit going down in Sokovia, and now feel they can just swan in and blow up even more of their country just because they can? The SPF send them in to fight the Avengers partially to win PR (Sokovia is not happy with the Avengers, as we see in the beginning of AoU) but also to show off how powerful their two ‘assets’ are.
Which brings us to point number 3- no mind control. Instead, Wanda and Pietro absolutely wipe the floor with the Avengers. Wanda in particular is shown to be very, very powerful, able to use how powers and control probability to the point where the unprepared Avengers are forced into a fighting retreat. Tony takes the scepter and makes Ultron not because Wanda mind-fucked him, but because he’s terrified if they go up against the twins again, they’re all going to die.
And finally, part 4- Ultron. Ultron doesn’t offer the twins revenge on the Avengers- he’s offering them the liberation of their country. He’s promising that if they side with him against the Avengers, he’ll make sure not!Russia are thrown out.
So this is basically happening while the Avengers are doing various movie things (instead of mindfucking the Hulk, Wanda takes him on a full throw down, drag out fight in Jo’burg, both of them so intent on ending each other they don’t notice the damage they’ve done. When Wanda sees the mess they’ve made, she is clearly shaken and horrified)
However, when she goes back to Sokovia, she sees that while the Ultron controlled Iron legion have thrown out not’Russian forces, the SPF haven’t been any better. there are mass executions, slaughters of not!Russian supporting villages, the extermination of the People’s Front of Sokovia, the works.
She turns to Ultron to get him to stop this mess. But Ultron just shrugs and goes, ‘whateves dude, you’re all going extinct today’. Then the rest of the movie pretty much plays out as canon. Wanda sides with the Avengers against Ultrers, Pietro dies, most of Sokovia is trashed.
This not only make Wanda a more likable character by removing her more egregious crimes (siding with Hydra and mind rape) and villainous motivations ( freeing your country is a hell of a lot more likable than random murder), but also sets the scene for Civil War for more intriguingly.
The Avengers have seen what happens when they follow the UN- a UN which had no problem letting a country get completely trashed as they quibbled over semantics (coughRwandacough) but at the same time, they see the problem of not having oversight- the SPF were just as bad as not!Russia. This gives both sides valuable points and would make both Cap’s side and Wanda’s decision to join him waaay mroe relevant and compelling than…. well, what we got.
So, in summary, likable flawed-but-redeemable Wanda, and sensible Civil war lead up.