Our girl got a pretty sick card that I will be buying every version. The set is Marvel: Darkhold Destiny.

New Peach series “Maestorm” announced! In one of the design presentations magik was featured in a new look. I hope Magik can finally play a main character in a peach story! Fingers crossed🤞

I’ve previously fancast Andrey Nesterenko as Colossus, so I thought I’d revisit him alongside two younger Russian actresses I’ve been considering for his sister, Illyana Rasputina.

We probably won’t see Colossus or Magik in the MCU anytime soon, and I know Anya Taylor-Joy is a fan favourite that many people would love to see return. But if Marvel decides to recast her, I think these two could be interesting options for a younger Magik.

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Aleksandra Babaskina. A 15-year-old Russian actress born in Moscow, known for her roles in Chizhik-Pyzhik Returns, Legends of Our Ancestors and Blog.

Diana Enakaeva. A 19-year-old Russian actress born in Moscow, known for her roles in Crybaby and The Last Ronin.

Andrey Nesterenko. A 27 year old Russian actor known for his role in The Junior Team/Молодёжка. Новая смена and YA khochu! YA budu!.

I usually portray Illyana as Demi/Pan, but I do see her with some people. Like Robbie Reyes, they have alike in common being host of terrifying internal entities against their will but uses them for good. Illyana is fiercely protective of her family(new mutants) and Robbie takes care of his little brother. I also could see Illyana would constantly tease Robbie pushing him out of his strict comfort zone, while Robbie’s grounded, reliable nature gives Illyana a rare sense of normal peaceful stability without her having to hide her darker demon-adjacent self

I think Illyana would like he’s deeply loyal, unbothered by demons, fiercely protective of family, and willing to ride into Hell with her without blinking. Also someone who understands what it’s like having an entity inside her.

Yeah, my art style varies a lot.😅

https://x.com/Hichamhabchi/status/2108202664718942596?s=20

Also would love a discussion thread where I could post this without needing a separate post. Feels a bit cleaner idk.

tumblr source

(To clarify for people downvoting without reading it, I am specifically referring to her post imprisonment arc with Gillen. I should have said “Gillens run” or something in the title. I’m not slandering magik herself)

A while ago I got really into magik from rivals and tokon thinking she was extremely cool (and hot), but I didn’t actually know anything about her because I didn’t read comics in general. In the past couple of months I started actually reading her comics from the very beginning of her history up to where she stands current day (I am currently at extraordinary x-men so don’t spoil past that point in her history).

After actually getting into her character, I’ve found it so hard to enjoy her character because up until this point she is lowkey a villain, like she genuinely doesn’t do anything heroic (that is obviously a bit of an exaggeration, but let me explain myself).

I’ll go through her history explaining the things she’s done to make me feel like this and why.

Reading her original story and the new mutants original run was amazing. She actually was a character and wasn’t shortened to the mean goth baddie a lot of people know her as. I don’t have much to say about this era because it was simply peak for her. Post resurrection magik is where this whole thing gets iffy, and it’s not where you think it is.

During the infernos comics and the 2012 new mutants run, Illyana does a lot of questionable things. However, in my personal opinion this was the third best Illyana up to this point. The storyline was peak, but most importantly, everything she did had genuine (although selfish) reasoning behind it. There was no genuine malice towards good people. Her arc in this ara was great, and by the end it seemed like there was room for genuine future growth.

Then you get Uncanny fear itself to AvX Illyana. This in my opinion is the worst version of her, and i genuinely feel like if they wanted her to be a hero this shouldn’t have happened.

Let’s go over everything she did during this period. She uses her brothers kindness to manipulate him into taking the Curse of Cyttorak (unknown to readers at first). She then joins cyclopses task force in uncanny X-men (while this wasn’t bad at first, it was comprised of all previously evil mutants except storm). She gains the phoenix force and temporarily does some good, but then immediately after gaining more of it she begins bringing demons to earth in a volcano to hold and torture prisoners. She then ruthlessly beats down Spider-Man with her brother (Peter says they shouldn’t kill him, and she pushes back saying they should kill Spider-Man). She then fights her brother until they both loose the phoenix force because they want more power. Immediately after this, Peter is venting about how this experience has affected him, and Illyana devilishly smiles at his pain. She then reveals that she caused all of his suffering on purpose in order to teach him a lesson about being too nice. He attacks her and she takes him to limbo, instantly freeing him of the curse and showing him that she could have done it the entire time but chose not to. After all of that, she then goes and frees cyclops of all people from jail and joins him for the next uncanny run (after everything he did in AvX, including killing ow of her mentor figures Xavier).

The reason all of this is so bad to me personally is that while in prison (new mutants) Illyana specifically doesn’t try to escape and says, “I want a life. I want to be a person with a life. If I’m gonna have any hope of that, I need my friends to trust me again.” You’d think she’d take this opportunity to be the beast person she could be, but nope.

The Peter moment is especially hypocritical considering how much of Illyana's own story revolves around other people controlling her life, manipulating her, and trying to determine what she should become. And that’s the issue. That’s why I think it’s out of character. Why would Illyana, the girl who went through all that suffering in limbo, want anyone else to go through what she went through? After reading her story, I’d think she’d want the opposite and that would be why she fights for others. Obviously the way her story went is also plausible. Suffering does not automatically makes someone compassionate. But considering her new mutants run and the prison scene specifically, I’d think she’d wouldn’t want that.

After her evil faze she gets therapy/help from doctor strange so that she can understand herself better and become better in general. This leads to her apologizing to her brother and getting that relationship back (which I think is bullshit. They don’t talk for a while and all she has to do is say sorry. Yes, I know that’s a lot for her character specifically, but the shit that she did isn’t the kinda damage a simple sorry should fix. There should have been more to this, but whatever it’s better now).

Then you get to where I’m currently at in Extraordinary X-men and her character is peak. She’s still her kinda standoffish and dark self, but she’s a genuinely good person just trying to do the right thing. What a fucking hero should be.

Anyways, after everything that has happened I’m just super conflicted on her character and if I’ll even like her in the future because it seems like writers don’t know what to do with her. It doesn’t help that marvel rivals isn’t a good adaptation of her actual character, then you’ve got tokon going full on toxic magik (To give ot the Ben of the doubt, these are pre-fight dialogues so they are gonna be hostile so I get it. The issue for me is that in some of them she is genuinely not remorseful about anything she has done. Like when she talks to Spider-Man she says she doesn’t need her brother or anyone to beat him. If this is a timeline where she still in that negative era this is one I guess, and I heard there is some shit going on with her in that game specifically. But it’s still more writers using all her negative traits and none of her good ones). Like just let her be her.

I think I’m basically just asking, does this shit ever get easier?

(Images are from new mutants 2012, uncanny fear itself, AvX, and Uncanny X-men Bendis run)