✦ app for empirica ✦

[seeingscarlet]

➺ PLAYER

 

Name: Callie

Age: 25

Preferred Contact Method: dontyousonicme@plurk

Current Characters: None!

➺ CHARACTER

 

Character Name: Wanda Maximoff

Character Age: Not stated in canon. Let's go with 20.

 

Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe

 

Canon Point: Post Age of Ultron

 

History: Here! 

 

Personality: Wanda is the generally calmer, more responsible half of the Maximoff twins. At her best, she is perceptive, caring, and protective of both her loved ones and the innocent. However, when properly angered, she can be extremely vengeful and is sometimes blind to the potential negative consequences of her actions.

 

Wanda has had a drive to take her personal tragedy and turn it into something better since losing her parents in the bombings. She and Pietro participated in protests and riots against foreign powers occupying and destabilizing Sokovia before Strucker approached them. Where others may have collapsed into depression and apathy, Wanda and Pietro supported each other and became the other's rock. Neither sibling is the ringleader - Pietro had to convince Wanda to participate in Strucker's experiments and Wanda had to convince Pietro to let Tony go early in the movie.

 

Wanda demonstrates her resilience again after losing Pietro by officially joining the Avengers. She was greatly moved by SHIELD's efforts to rescue her people, and I'm sure there is no small amount of wanting to atone for helping Ultron and accidentally putting Pietro in a fatal situation. It may not have mattered whose fault it was at the time, but after the fact it is highly likely Wanda feels a need to prove that she can be better. See: volunteering to protect the key and insisting multiple times that Pietro rescue everyone else first before he came back for her.

 

Basically, her home is gone. Her family is gone. Joining the Avengers gave her a way to find purpose and a place she might be able to belong someday. Wanda will still be looking for that sense of home in Empirica and those who show her genuine kindness will find her receptive to their efforts to befriend her.

 

Given that protectiveness seems to come so easily to her, it seems to me that Wanda seriously underestimated how much damage the Hulk could cause and how difficult it would be for the other Avengers to contain him. She spent so much of her life fighting to protect Sokovian civilians - and was willing to die to do so - that deliberately putting so many innocents in harm's way is completely out of character. Especially given her later breakdown over the damage caused to Novi Grad, it seems more likely to me that Wanda expected the Hulk to need immediate Avenger attention but nothing on the level of Veronica plus being smashed through a building and punched out. Powerful though Wanda is, she is not omniscient and she can never know for sure what effects her visions will have on people.

 

Wanda has already lived through her greatest fear - losing her brother. If the Empire pulls him in, he will become her berserk button, so to speak, and Wanda will do anything, including putting herself in harm's way, to keep him safe. This also extends to a lesser extent to anyone she grows close to, especially Clint. Wanda's lost so much that she will cling to the friends she finds and will enact horrible vengeance on anyone who harms them (like ripping out Ultron's "heart"). Wanda definitely can get blinders where that's concerned - while she's normally not the impulsive one, she completely abandoned her post after Pietro's death to track Ultron down. If anything, at this canon point, she will be slightly more inclined to act impulsively to protect her friends or the innocent, since her current greatest fear is letting Novi Grad Take 2 happen.

 

It's important to note that while Wanda did get scared and had a breakdown midway through the fight for Sokovia, she showed no more hesitation after a pep talk from Clint. Wanda has seen so much personal tragedy that she's no stranger to having to shelve feelings until simple survival is not an immediate concern. She's much more grounded than her brother in that respect, which is why it's so striking when she goes after Ultron. Wanda meant it when she told him she'd already died, and she gave into her rage and grief because she did not intend to survive Novi Grad's fall (even though ability-wise, she was perfectly capable of saving herself if she wanted to).

On a more day-to-day basis, Wanda is guilty of allllllmost fussing if her friends are hurt or sick. She's used to sharing and/or making do with less than ideal resources, so none of her friends are ever going to go without if she has something that could help. I expect she will take rudimentary medical training if it's offered so that she can help in a pinch.

 

Although she's nowhere near the level of her brother, Wanda does have a dry sense of humor that escapes in the occasional quip. She briefly snarks at Steve in South Africa and shows a teasing side in a rare unguarded moment with Pietro. Unfortunately, we don't see much of it because she's in a lot of very dire circumstances in the movie, but it will be more present in Empirica during lighter moments.

  

On the less friendly side of things, I'd do Wanda a disservice if I didn't mention her complicated relationship with Tony Stark. Wanda's issues with Tony and Stark Industries are never resolved on-screen, so until and unless CA: Civil War touches on that, I am going with the following assumption: While Wanda is willing to work with Tony for the greater good and will try to stay civil to keep the peace (because really, the man makes enough of an ass of himself without any outside help), she would rather team up with literally anyone else. While she generally won't use her mind-reading abilities on the rest of the Avengers, she'll make an exception for Tony - Wanda does not particularly trust his judgement or his honesty. She may be able to get over this aversion given time and a visible effort on Tony's part, because she did see him trying to do the right thing to save the people of Novi Grad, but you don't erase 10 years of blaming someone for your parents' deaths in a few short weeks. 

 

Most of note at this canon point is that Wanda is seriously emotionally scarred from the events of Age of Ultron. This colors the way she's going to see the Empire/Insurgent conflict, and she may take a different course of action in-game than she did in canon if presented with a similar choice. She'll be wrestling with guilt and self-doubt. Having royally screwed up a vaguely similar situation before, can she really trust her own judgement in this conflict? Are the rebels actually as bad as the rumors say? Will the Empire keep helping refugees when the Assets aren't around to see it? Honestly, if Wanda could wave her hands and force both sides to the negotiating table to end this war permanently, she would - it certainly would eliminate some of the uncertainty.

Wanda is still willing to fight if she has to, though since the sides in this conflict are much more morally gray than anything she has experienced, she generally won't start out fighting to kill unless there are extenuating circumstances (such as Pietro or someone else she cares about being in serious trouble). But Wanda's not a pacifist - she will escalate to whatever level she feels is necessary to protect herself or those under her care. Hypnosis may not be her favorite application of her powers, but if it's necessary, it's necessary and Wanda  won't hesitate once she commits to a course of action. 

 

One final note: traditionally the Maximoffs are half-Jewish and half-Romani. I've read that the extended edition of Age of Ultron is supposed to flesh their history out more because legal issues made a major backstory change necessary. Until Marvel confirms or denies it, I'd like to keep that part of Wanda's heritage if it comes up. As for why they were working with HYDRA, Wanda likely didn't discover the real identity of the organization that was "helping" them or HYDRA's Nazi ties until after she gained her powers and saw into their minds - look how quickly the twins abandon Strucker and the rest of his men to the Avengers once they have an opportunity to escape. At her current canon point, she would never do that to Steve and the others if a fight was going poorly.

 

Power & Abilities: Since this is MCU Wanda, I'm not touching her comic-verse powers. As far as we've seen, they're not the same. Also, obviously I will have a permissions post to avoid godmodding/infomodding.

 

Wanda's powers include telekinesis, telepathy, mental manipulation, and general energy manipulation. None of these have a range in canon, so let's say she needs to be in the same room for telepathy (distance increasing based on the strength of the bond up to a mile for Pietro), line of sight-ish/medium range for telekinesis and normal energy manipulation, one mile for simple mental manipulation (such as 'you need to evacuate now'), and touch range for complicated mental manipulation. For balance's sake, she can do one 'thing' at a time and I will always ask permission before affecting a PC with her powers.

 

All of Wanda's powers manifest as red mist and energy. Her hands and the object or energy field she is manipulating will also glow red. Occasionally, if Wanda concentrates, her eyes will turn red as well, and anyone under her hypnosis will also have the same red eyes to visually represent Wanda's hold on them.

 

She gained her powers after exposure to the Scepter's energy, likely through a burn or cut of some sort on her right hand since both she and Pietro have identical bandages in this scene. The Maximoffs were the only ones to respond well to the tests; all of the other subjects died. Wanda gained telekinesis, energy and mental manipulation, and the ability to read minds and memories at will.

 

Her telekinesis is more than just levitating objects. She is also able to prevent someone from drawing a weapon by simply holding the gun in their hands down as opposed to breaking out her hypnosis powers. Interestingly enough, Wanda's telekinesis is so strong that she can pull something through vibranium given time and all of her concentration - it's not something she could do in a standard fight unless she was well guarded. By the end of the movie, Wanda also learned to extend this subset of her powers to levitate herself and simulate flight.

 

Her most common weapon and defense is basic energy manipulation. Fandom calls it hex energy to match the comics, but it seems like this could be a misnomer for MCU Wanda. She may be simply manipulating latent energy in the environment, and it's highly likely that Wanda herself isn't entirely sure how her powers work. Functionally, she can create bolts, blasts, spheres, and waves to fight enemies and walls to shield herself and others from harm. Like all her abilities, it's not particularly stealthy - the latent "stuff" takes on a reddish hue when Wanda starts gathering and shaping it. Her shield seems to be one of her weaker abilities, and while it can buy her time, Ultron's drones take it out without much difficulty. If it's overpowered, she takes a nasty backlash that can throw her to the ground. 

 

Wanda does need free movement of her hands and arms to gather and direct the energy fields, but prolonged use does not seem to drain her. She has full control over what is affected in the red spheres of influence, as seen when she released a wave of energy that passed through several mundane objects but only actually harmed the Ultron Sentries.

 

While the "hex bolts" are powerful, they're actually not the scariest thing Wanda can do. She can read minds and memories at will, and if she can get close to someone, she can hypnotize them to see whatever vision she chooses to show them. They may have some actual prophetic ability (or at least Thor and Tony believed so and only time or deleted scenes will tell - apparently there is one addressing Thor's vision in more detail) although she is just as capable of dredging up traumatic things from one's past. It also stands to reason that she could read and manipulate dreams as well. However, like all of her 'mental' powers, it's completely useless on robots or creatures that don't have an actual brain (spirits, elemental beings, etc). However, she can affect androids, and if a spirit tends to communicate telepathically, Wanda might be able to read them at the other player's discretion.

 

Wanda is also capable of implanting suggestions in one's mind as well, seen when she makes the residents of an entire neighborhood stop what they're doing and evacuate Novi Grad. For balance's sake, this needs to be a simple command, much like the lower ranks of Dominate in VtM, and if she can't devote her full concentration to it, how long the command will stick is up to the affected individual's willpower. Wanda uses this on a random NPC in one of the samples in the manner I am proposing. Please let me know if that's not okay.

 

Wanda is capable of other, more constructive, forms of mental manipulation as well. She was able to free Dr. Cho from the mind control effects of the Scepter with no apparent trouble. This would likely work with many panfandom afflictions with external causes such as the Imperius curse from Harry Potter. If the control involves having part of a person (their heart as in Once Upon a Time or blood magic), Wanda wouldn't be able to directly lift it.

 

It's often said that twins have a special connection, and it seems that Wanda's telepathic powers only amplified her bond with Pietro. She sensed his death from the other end of the city and likely was always aware of his general condition or presence. If Pietro appears in the game, she will know immediately. It's also extremely unlikely she could fall for a fake or illusion of her brother unless they were able to replicate the twin bond somehow.

 

Wanda never seems ashamed of her abilities, though she does look uncomfortable when Ultron tells her to use them to tear the Avengers apart "from the inside out." She also does not try to hypnotize or "properly" intimidate Klaue even after he taunts her, and it seems like her "I can show you what you truly fear" line may have been slightly more bravado than an actual threat. Wanda generally appears to be less comfortable manipulating the minds of others, though she has few compunctions with just taking a look in their heads. For balance's sake, I am assuming that at some point someone sat her down and told her that you have to learn to trust your teammates and that constantly being in other people's minds is generally an Uncool Thing.

 

However, Wanda may gain a reputation for giving very good birthday or holiday presents.
 

But even if she is not ashamed of her powers, Wanda is very acutely aware of how very dangerous they are. If she were to seriously lose control of her negative emotions, it would be bad and people could die. Strucker considered the twins miracles but believed that "there is nothing more horrifying than a miracle," and this has stuck with her. Wanda knows intimately that her powers tend to freak people out, and there is always a part of her that wants to prove that she can be more than that. 

 

Supernatural abilities aside, Wanda can be extremely stealthy when she wants to be - sneaking up on Natasha Romanoff is no small feat. She is also multilingual and speaks at least Sokovian (which is functionally Serbian OOG) and English fluently, though her English is heavily accented.

 

Inventory: Just a few changes of clothes, her jewelry, and Pietro's very beat up "little picture" of the Maximoff family.

 

Game Plan: As previously mentioned, Wanda cannot tolerate the sacrifice of innocent life for power or political gain. This isn't her fight, as much as both sides would like to convince her otherwise. She'd rather force them all to a truce anyway, but since the Insurgents have fewer compunctions about hurting civilians, she's going to see staying with the Empire as the best way to keep innocents safe (at first anyway). They have a common enemy in the more disruptive rebels. Wanda's also really not fond of weapons dealers, gangs that force people to "pay for protection," and others who benefit most when the general population suffers. She's more willing to hurt them than anyone else, because to her that's the face of true evil.

 

I think it's easy to misread Wanda's protesting days as being an actual dislike or distrust of organizations, but this simply isn't true - the Maximoffs were protesting other countries using Sokovia as a pawn and means to an end to the detriment of its people. HYDRA was going out of its way to destabilize Sokovia and make conditions very bad, and it does not appear that the protesters were ever willing to go to the lengths the Insurgents are (in the book Wanda actually tells Ultron to keep their fight with the Avengers out of Sokovia and is completely horrified by the very idea). It doesn't seem that the two situations are a good enough match to be comparable.

 

Basically, her loyalty is always to the people caught in the crossfire, and her guilt over Novi Grad and Pietro will often leave her second-guessing her choices. As such, Wanda could be talked into defecting based on what a hypothetical Pietro or Avengers team decides to do - if they feel they can protect more people working with the rebels, they can likely talk Wanda into following them. I could also see the Insurgents wanting to capture and try to turn her due to her abilities. It will be very interesting to see how things work out in-game!

 

I definitely see her not caring at all what "side" someone is on if working with them helps the "greater good." She does see her younger self in the Insurgents and won't be particularly keen on causing lasting harm there - both sides have a point, even if she really doesn't like how the rebels as a whole are conducting themselves. Of course, she will likely have a good deal of respect for many of the Insurgents, but some of the things done in their name are never going to sit right. Inaction is a choice that can lead to great evil, after all.

 

Whichever side she's on, Wanda's going to be most valuable on diplomatic missions (as lying to her is beyond most people's abilities) or assisting as an escort for an important person or thing. She is also a good person to send in if you have a PR problem with the locals or a refugee situation since she's been in their shoes and will be better able to help create a response plan than someone who has not.

 

➺ LINK TO SAMPLES

 

TDM - Sorano (Contains a deliberate display of several of Wanda's powers in a hostile situation against random NPCs. Please let me know if the limits I have imposed on her are not enough.)
Ruby City - Steve Rogers

 

May we use your application as an example if it's accepted? Sure!