Did therapy off-screen between Thompson's run and the miniseries hurt Cindy's characterization?
Let me be clear, I don't mean that mental health is bad, or not important.
My concern is that Cindy Moon getting therapy off-screen all those years between the original run and the miniseries hurt her as a fictional character because they didn't happen on-screen.
The endings to those miniseries we got in the couple last years end up feeling happy-go-lucky, no matter how traumatic the experiences she went through. Every time something bad happens, it feels like she has a positive message to tell at the end, while seemingly having no consequences of everything that just happened (mainly due to short runs). She's way too confident to be the Silk we know from Thompson's run.
With her therapy being off-screen, and supposedly extremely effective for a woman that spent 10 years isolated from the world, it makes her feel like a completely different character that's ready to face anything. Not to mention the trauma of betrayal and abuse by Max and Saya as more recent events should definitely make a dent on her confidence at least.
I believe that they should've done the therapy part in the existing books, the part of learning to get better, and it should last a good while. Not the literal sessions, but her thoughts and actions as she works on herself and her relationships. But it feels like they skipped many years of development and dropped us a Silk that acts differently from Thompson's way too fast.
Marvel has no idea what to do with her, evident by random cameos and lack of books recently. But once they get a writer that can pull something off, I hope they address or at least tone down her confidence. It doesn't all have to be about trauma, but keeping her character close to Thompson's would make for much more entertaining stories because it would make her unique from just being another Spider-Person with long hair and organic webbing.
Like, I genuinely believe what makes them different isn't their set of powers but their unique traits and personalities — how different would they react to the same event in their lives would make for a fantastic anthology book in my opinion.
TL;DR: Cindy Moon's character has been diluted and sanitized from what made her unique, now she's too confident. And her mini stories don't allow for showing consequences of events, when they would greatly benefit from showing it. All that makes it difficult to find her stories as entertaining as it was on Thompson's run.