#and don't ask me about Robert and Madelyne okay? That shit was swiftly retconned as a misunderstanding and nobody in the year 2024

[scarlet--wiccan]

So this is not supposed to be a gotcha question because I'm sure you'll have a good response to it, but what of the argument that Wanda and Pietro were white characters for the first 15 years of their history (arguably until VIsion & The Scarlet Witch vol. 2 confirmed Magda)? What gets to me on social media is the frequent statement that they were always Romani, a bit like (though not nearly as bad as) the idea that the Hitler-like Magneto of the 60s/70s should be read as a Holocaust survivor.

Well, I agree that it would be dishonest to claim that they were "always" intended to be Romani characters, because as far as we know, that's simply not the truth. But to that, I raise two points. The first-- so what? They didn't have a fully established backstory in the 60s or for most of the 70s, but the same can be said a lot of other Silver Age characters, including most of the original X-Men cast. So who cares? When the writers finally settled on a concrete backstory, this is what they came up with.

Second, I think the fact that they've existed as such for 40+ years, and that their heritage is an integral part of every iteration of their origin story-- not to mention the fact that it makes them arguably the most prominent Romani characters in the entire superhero genre/American pop culture writ large-- should be enough for people to accept that this is a key aspect of the characters, and it's not going to change. I'm sorry, but if you look at Wanda and Pietro's full 60 year publication history and all you can say is "well, for a small fraction of that time, years before I or most people currently purchasing comics were even born, they were white, so therefore I'm entitled to whitewash them," you're being racist. You just are.

We're talking about representations of a marginalized community, as well as depictions of, and narratives about, the way that community has historically been oppressed. You have to internalize that fact, and, like, have a moral backbone about it.

As for Magneto, I think that when we're reading material that spans decades, as comics do, we have to develop the ability to simultaneously read the text as it was written at the time of publication, AND view it in context of the larger continuity. I agree that it's hard to reconcile Magneto's characterization in the 60s and 70s with the version we know and love today, but you don't necessarily have to. And I have to say, this is a very different situation that I don't think compares at all to Wanda and Pietro. With Magneto, we've two different character treatments that really conflict, but with the twins it's just an absence of information that was eventually expanded upon.