♪ 29. Aquarius, Any/All Pronouns ♫ I write stuff about girls with super powers playing music, among other things. ------------------- Side-Blog For Book Series: Soundwaves-Series
As I'm in the need of a bit of money due to vet bills hurting my wallet, I'm offering writing based commissions. This can be fanfiction, original fiction, or even an essay if you're feeling spicy and want me to spout opinions from my mouth-hole through my keyboard. I also offer my services as an editor for small to medium sized projects other people have written.
For Fanfiction:
Because these require me to have some level of knowledge of the source material, I'm offering fanfiction at a slightly lower price over all than the other options. I'm willing to write for most ships, even ones I don't like, provided they aren't pro-ship stuff (incest, adult/minor, fetishized abuse, etc).
Starting Price is $10 USD for 5000 words.
From here, it's an additional $2 USD per 1000 words.
In most circumstances, I will not exceed 10000 words.
Limited NSFW is allowed, with the price ranging from $5-10 USD, depending on my comfort level with what is requested.
You are given 2 free revision edits per 5000 words if you are unsatisfied with something.
All revisions after those free revisions incurs a fee, which will range between $1-3 USD, depending on how much needs to be revised.
You do not own the fanfiction in question, and it will be posted to my AO3 and Tumblr (at minimum), which you can link.
If you wish to post it on your own platforms, instead of them being posted on mine, you can pay a $5-10 fee, and I'll consider it a ghost writing project.
For Original Fiction:
Most of the above applies to Original Fiction, but the prices are different. This is because I can't read your mind, and unless you give me a clear enough vision of what you want, I'm less likely to satisfy you.
Starting Price is $15 USD for 5000 words.
From here, it's an additional $3 USD per 1000 words.
I will not write anything more than 10000 words for original fiction. This is due to the level of commitment involved.
Limited NSFW is allowed, but will incur a $7-15 fee, depending on my comfort level.
You are given 3 free revision edits per 5000 words if you are unsatisfied with something.
All revisions after that will add a fee of $3-5 USD, depending on how much needs to be revised.
I own the story, and will post to my Tumblr and Wattpad (at minimum), which you can link.
If you'd like to own the original fiction outright, you can triple what you paid to own it. I can still list it in my credits though.
If you want to not have me take any credit at all, it's a flat $100 USD minimum.
For Editing:
I will edit any form of writing, but it comes with different pricing.
I have a mandatory cost of $10 USD to start, regardless of what it is, or how long it is.
This mandatory cost is increased to $20 USD if the thing I'm editing is NSFW.
If the work exceeds 5000 words, I will charge an additional $2 USD per 1000 words.
If the word exceeds 10000 words, then I will double that to $4 USD per 1000 words.
I will not exceed 25000 words per job at this time. I just don't have the time for that.
I will require editing credit in the event the thing I'm editing is original fiction that you intend to publish. This does not apply for Fanfiction or Essays.
For Essays:
If you're a weirdo, and just want to pay me to write some kind of essay akin to some of the ones I post on here, then you can do that. I charge a base fee of $15 USD, but the price will fluctuate depending on the subject matter. I won't write any essays on anything overtly political. They will be posted onto my Tumblr. I can't guarantee you will agree with the thesis though, so you've been warned if you wanna do this.
Contacting Me:
I can be reached via DMs or Asks (I prefer asks before DMs, but whatever works). From there, we can discuss whatever it is you want me to write, as I want to confirm if I'm comfortable with writing whatever it is you want me to.
Additional Terms & Conditions:
ALL SALES ARE FINAL ONCE WORK HAS STARTED UNLESS THE FOLLOWING SITUATION OCCURS:
If I am unable to work on the commission for one reason or another, I will then refund you 50% of the money, and give you all things produced for you to do with however you please, without needing to credit me.
In the event that you harass me about a commission, cross boundaries too often in our conversations, or I otherwise deem you to be rude, at my own discretion, I will cancel the commission. You will not be refunded. By paying me, you are agreeing to this condition. I have a life outside of this, and I will not be harassed for it.
Payment will be done over Paypal with an invoice. I will give you 3 days to send payment from when the invoice is sent, unless we've reached an agreement otherwise. Otherwise, I will consider you to be uninterested in proceeding, and will cancel the commission. I do not like having my chain jerked around by people saying they want a commission, only to ghost me.
My writing is NOT to be used for any Web 3.0 or AI Training Data. While I'm sure that many companies will scrape it anyway, I do not work with people who want to put my work into training data.
I will not give you a guaranteed delivery date, but it will usually be within 2 weeks of getting the commission, depending on my schedule.
I know some of this might come off as a bit strict, but I want to cover my ass. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this. If you have any further questions, please, feel free to ask me! Thanks!
(I'm hoping I can get a few so I can manage like, 200 bucks. I had to go to the vet the past month to get one of my cats some shots, so I'm running a bit low on funds.)
EMERGENCY COMMISSIONS!
Please read all description in listing before applying!
I've currently got $595, as much as I could put it towards rent, I'd rather save it for Batman's thoracentesis procedures.
🔗 ko-fi.com/c/7555107e07
Or if you don't know what you get and just want to pitch in to help, my links are below:
When Tess Morgan's son came home with a tattoo, she was griefstricken. She knew her reaction was OTT (he's 21) but it signalled a change in their relationship
This is gold this, absolute gold, the most over the top melodramatic hysterical ridiculous thing I’ve ever read
This is actually so interesting to read- it’s from 2012 but its full of the same anxieties, even some of the same phrasing that many of the guardian’s later pieces on transness use. really hammers home how much of the terfism that emerged in the late 10s was middle class mothers angry at a loss of control over their adult children- whether that be their bodies or their friends or their opinions- and making that everyone’s problem because they have the power to do so
I look at him, sitting there, my 21-year-old son. I feel I’m being interviewed for a job I don’t even want. I say, “But you’re not. You’re different. I will never look at you in the same way again. It’s a visceral feeling. Maybe because I’m your mother. All those years of looking after your body – taking you to the dentist and making you drink milk and worrying about green leafy vegetables and sunscreen and cancer from mobile phones. And then you let some stranger inject ink under your skin. To me, it seems like self-mutilation. If you’d lost your arm in a car accident, I would have understood. I would have done everything to make you feel better. But this – this is desecration. And I hate it.”
I'mma be real: if a person in my life got as offended by a choice as basic as a tattoo or a piercing, I'd cut them out of my life, because that tells you everything you need to know about who they are underneath the mask you normally see them wear. If they get upset about a tattoo or something, they're prone to get upset about anything that goes against their internalized view of "controlled normalcy."
I found a deep open wound on my cat’s side. It looks like it may have been from a fight or an abscess that burst, and seeing it like that honestly broke me. I’m doing what I can to keep it clean and comfortable, but it’s clear that this needs proper veterinary treatment as soon as possible.
If you know me, you know how much my cat means to me. They’re family. And right now, I feel helpless because I wasn’t financially prepared for something this sudden.
I’m reaching out humbly to ask if anyone would be willing to help me cover vet expenses. Even small amounts would mean so much and go directly toward consultation, antibiotics, and treatment.
At the moment, my PayPal and Zelle aren’t available, so the only way I can receive support is through my bank. If you’d like to help, please just shoot me a message and I’ll send the details privately.
If you’re unable to donate, sharing this post would already help more than you know.
$33/$850
The $850 is the goal amount to cover the vet visit, wound treatment, antibiotics, possible pain medication, and any additional care they may need once he’s examined. When I called the clinic, they gave me that figure as an estimate for the consultation and initial treatment based on how I described his condition. It could be a little less or more depending on what they find, but that’s the amount they told me to prepare for upfront.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Hug your pets a little tighter tonight!
I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who has been sharing and reaching out. I truly appreciate it more than I can put into words. I still need help to get him seen, he hasn’t been eating much, which is what’s worrying me the most right now.
For the moment, I’m gently cleaning his wound with saline and diluted betadine (light tea color) to help keep it clean while I work on getting him to the vet. I’m being very careful not to use anything harsh.
I’m also attaching a photo my cat with my Tumblr profile beside him as proof that he’s my cat and that this is real, just in case anyone has doubts. I understand there are a lot of scams online, so I want to be as transparent as possible.
It’s been four days now, and Cleo still isn’t eating properly. He feels weaker, and that’s what scares me the most. He’ll sniff his regular food but barely touch it. I’ve been offering his usual meals so I don’t upset his stomach with sudden changes, and I also bought oral rehydration fluids to help keep him hydrated since he’s not eating much. I’ve been carefully giving it to him to make sure he doesn’t get dehydrated.
I’m continuing to gently clean his wound with saline and diluted betadine to keep it from getting worse, but I know this isn’t a substitute for proper medical care. He really needs to be seen by a vet as soon as possible 😭😭😭‼️‼️
I was able to bring Cleo to the vet yesterday. He was diagnosed with a deep infected abscess that required surgery under anesthesia. They cleaned out the infection, removed damaged tissue, and placed a drain. He’s currently on IV fluids, antibiotics, and pain medication, and is being monitored until he’s stable and eating on his own.
I was approved for $1,000 through CareCredit and made an upfront payment of $500, which I’m very grateful for. There is still a remaining balance that needs to be settled.
I’m also trying to sell my PS5 to help alleviate the cost — if anyone is in NY and interested, please let me know.
If you’re still willing or able to help in any way, I would deeply appreciate it. Thank you so much for all the continued support and kindness.
A Forest Fire Started By A Car Crash - Life is Strange: A Before the Storm Ramble
I've made it no secret in the past that I'm a fan of Life is Strange. Specifically, the first game, and True Colors (some day I will write some kind of wordy blog post about it). As I type this, I just got Double Exposure, in preparation for Reunion dropping next month (at time of writing). The series, pre-Double Exposure, was a pretty mixed bag for me.
I don't care for Life is Strange 2 for a number of reasons. It's both bloated in terms of runtime, and bone dry in terms of characters outside of it's primary duo. It has issues with pacing. I think the initial set up for the story is overly contrived. I'll probably talk about it in the future, and no doubt will get catch a lot of shit because of how divisive that game is. But this isn't that time. This is the Before the Storm post I'm making while I wait for Double Exposure to install. Naturally, spoilers for it, and LiS1 are below the cut.
Alright, so. If anyone were to ask people I know personally, they'll know that, since the announcement of Before the Storm, I was never in love with the idea of a prequel. I usually find prequel stories to be wastes of effort, because most people don't know how to properly handle them. Prequels often fall into the trap of "well, they can't go too crazy, or it'll contradict what happens in the original," and boy howdy does Before the Storm suffer from that. But that's also the least of it's issues.
There is a world out there where Before the Storm is a better game, with a good story, and solid writing. But I mean with 0 hyperbole that it embodies everything wrong with franchise prequels, and actively contributed to issues with LiS going forward.
I want to also quickly nip the idea that I dislike the game for being very Amberprice centric in the bud. The relationship between Chloe and Rachel is a core part of Chloe's backstory in the first game. She actively calls Rachel "(her) angel" when talking about her with Max. It was always something that, at least on Chloe's side, was a big deal. And if there was anything I wanted out of a prequel, it would be an exploration of that relationship. Instead, we got a surface level, rushed optional lesbian romance in a game about two girls with daddy issues.
Before the Storm spends a lot of it's time not telling a real story, and just being mostly a vibe, and if you like that, all the power to you. But I didn't. There's flashes of genuinely good shit in there, but it's buried under a bunch of questionable decisions, and a story that, frankly, didn't need to be told.
Episode 1 is basically the first meeting between Chloe and Rachel, and it has some genuinely good stuff in it. Sure, it's not how I'd have handled it by the end, but there's some solid attempts at making stuff work. Barring the cringe of making Chloe flip off a sign as the game opens, and the inciting incident of the overall plot being so contrived, there's some solid ideas present.
Chloe's lashing out and smashing stuff in the Junkyard after Rachel ditches her, after feeling seen for the first time in a while by someone, only to stop dead in her tracks when she sees her dad's car? That scene is genuinely cinema. Gives me goosebumps. It's the kind of thing that, in my hypothetical rewrite of Before the Storm, I would keep. It's a powerful moment. It's stuff like that where I think Deck Nine knocked it out of the park.
BtS is genuinely at it's best when we get to see Chloe's grief on full display. We get to see how the death of her father haunts her. I imagine that, if we didn't have an actor's strike likely impacting how the game was written, we could have seen "Max" scenes with a similar kind of vibe. Chloe's a character who, in her own mind, lost everything in the span of a week. I wish the game was more focused on that stuff; the game should have focused more on Chloe's increasingly self-destructive means of coping with the empty pain she feels.
Instead, we spend a lot of time with Rachel, who, frankly, is written in a way that doesn't do justice the concept of her character. Rachel is functionally the Laura Palmer of the first Life is Strange, and unlike Fire Walk With Me, which reinforced a lot of the ideas of who Laura Palmer was described to be in Twin Peaks whilst also giving us a peak behind the curtain of who she was, Rachel Amber is just made into a generic angsty teen who has some people skills. We spend time learning about Rachel's family drama, and her dad's goofy ass plot to have a drug dealer kill his ex, Rachel's Mom, out of selfish desires for his crumbling picturesque family life to remain in tact.
The issue with a lot of this is we know how it ends. We know Rachel goes behind Chloe's back to schmooze up with Frank (who is waaay too fucking old for her), and tries to do something similar with Jefferson, only to end up dead in a junkyard because of Nathan overdosing her. We know that Chloe, in half of the playthroughs of LiS1, gets shot and killed in a bathroom by Nathan. We should have focused entirely on Rachel and Chloe's relationship, and Chloe's grief. Instead, we got a plot about how the truth can sometimes hurt, and how sometimes ignorance is bliss.
A lot of people really gas up The Play, but I can't really get behind it. It's not because I think it's a scene that can't work, but in the context of the game, it just doesn't. Chloe has known Rachel for less than a week by the time the play scene happens, and the two are written to be so into each other that they plan to run away together only days after meeting? Really?
Now, I get Chloe latching onto Rachel. Chloe is a person in emotional pain, with issues about abandonment especially. She feels Max abandoned her by moving away and falling out of touch. She feels her dad abandoned her by dying in an accident. And she flips her fucking shit when Rachel seems to abandon her in that scene I mentioned being one of the best in the game. Chloe wants someone to see her, to promise to never leave, because she believes she needs that so badly. I've been there, I find that relatable. But I also understand that a new friendship burning this hot and quickly, let along a romance burning that hot and bright, is liable to blow up in her face. And it does by the time the original game rolls around.
In my hypothetical "perfect" version of BtS, the story would take place over the span of the 3 years Rachel and Chloe are together. We'd see the closeness between them blossom over the course of years, and how the relationship isn't perfect. We'd see how Chloe has some codependency issues born from her abandonment issues, and how she fails to see the problems with Rachel because of that. We could see Rachel being a bad influence, enabling Chloe's bad habits, because Rachel could also be going through stuff. We could have her family drama be in the background. In my head, if BtS were 5 episodes of vignettes, told over the span of the 3 years, we could have had all of the moments that were good in BtS, more implied history between the two, and we could cap it off with an emotional final episode that hammers home the tragedy of Amberprice.
I want to spare all of the nitty gritty details for a potential video essay on the topic of Before the Storm (which would go into more depth than this ramble post), but my big final twist of the knife in my hypothetical version of an ideal Before the Storm? The final episode taking place right when Rachel goes missing. In that version of BtS, we saw the bond between them grow over a larger time span, even if only in snippets, and then we end by ripping it away from you. We, the player, would know what happened to Rachel, but Chloe wouldn't. We'd see her life, again, fall apart. Steph and Mikey? They leave town to go to college. Her relationship with David hits it's lowest point. If we had to keep Elliot, we could have that blow up too.
The core idea of that take on the concept of a LiS1 prequel, seeing Chloe go from the girl we see in the Episode 3 Flashback in LiS1, to a girl in an unhealthy but stable place because of Rachel, into the bitter, broken, pissed at the world girl who desperately wants someone to stay by her side we see in LiS1? I dunno, that would be impactful. It wouldn't have to be a dramatic, large stakes story. It'd just be watching the gradual withering of a person, to reinforce why Chloe is the way she is in the original game. A girl who is hung up on the pain she feels, and the escape that Rachel provides.
I've always, always viewed Amberprice as a relationship that is somewhat toxic. Not in the sense where one is clearly abusive or overly manipulative, but more so in the sense that both parties draw out as much bad from one another as they do with the good. People who seek comfort, but not stability. A relationship that is doomed to fall apart, but in the moment is like a firework in the night sky. A band-aid over a deep wound. A disposable fix.
I know Amberprice people will likely not take to that reading well. That's fine. I'm not against the relationship, I just think that Before the Storm is very bad at conveying the image of Rachel, both from Chloe's incredibly biased perspective, and from outside of it. I can't buy into their relationship because it lacks that meaningful passage of time. I buy into Pricefield because the two of them have a history. A rocky one, sure, but a history that plays off of how the two complete one another. That "completion" doesn't need to be romantic, per say, but it's reinforced by the creators of that relationship's own words.
I know some people don't think a prequel to LiS1 works, and Before the Storm doesn't help. It's easily a game I could bitch about for literal hours. But I'm only mad because, like with a lot of creative things that genuinely spark ire in me, I can vividly see a better version of the thing in question. A version that gets it. I think prequels and sequels could work for LiS1. While I have low expectations for Double Exposure (and Reunion by proxy), I don't hate the idea of a sequel to the original game. I think there are stories to tell with these characters that respect the original intent of them. Before the Storm failed, and based purely on what I've heard, Double Exposure also failed, but I know there's good ideas in the trainwreck of bad ones that are these games, because I can see them in Before the Storm. One day, I'll go into depth via a rewrite outline to show what I mean.
But for now? I'm going to play Double Exposure to see if it also has good ideas buried under the mess. (It finished installing a while ago, but I couldn't stop typing.)
Computers are so scary what if I accidentally hit F12 in a steam game and it takes a screenshot. What if I press shift + F12 while in word and accidentally save my document 😖
If you had to learn what the F keys on your computer do through me reblogging this post, then I'm glad you did. Computer literacy is not a skill that gets taught anymore, and it is absolutely one that needs to be taught in order to be learned. Don't ever feel bad for not knowing something, but ☝️ don't ever stop learning learning about your environment, the tools you use, and especially the people around you
This is a long little rant thing I've been thinking about for a while. I had other posts I thought about making, and as I mentioned in my previous long post, I'm still considering a fanfic. Still, I just wanted to blab about some stuff. It gets a touch personal, relaying my experiences with the Spider-Man fanbase, before getting into what the problem is. It's long, so it's under the cut. I honestly doubt people will read it, so...
TL;DR: Spider-Man fandom is the worst fandom I've had the displeasure of interacting with over my nearly 31 years on this blue marble, and I think their self-sabotaging attitude of continuing to support a book that makes them bitter/unhappy/angry/etc. is kind of sad, when they should just let it go already.
Something that I've had nearly my entire life to contend with is the idea of fandom, and with it, how specific fandoms have impacted my life. Some for good, some for bad.
For instance, I've been told things like "the Sonic fandom is so toxic" but I just think it's full of young neurodivergent people who don't know how to properly articulate things, so they come off as a bit intense. Unless it's the Sonic Shipping fandom (cause lord knows that's a whole other can of worms), they've been pretty chill to me. Sure, I bicker with members of the fandom from time to time, but I hold little ill will to the not-shipping parts.
An example of a negative fandom experience I've had is the Undertale community. Back when the game was new, I got pressured super hard by people I knew personally who loved the game, and when the game didn't click with me (I just don't really like it), I got bombarded with a "you must have played it wrong" type of reaction, and long story short, I lost actual friends over their unwillingness to accept that I just didn't fuck with a game they loved, and was left with a deep resentment for the game because of the fanbase.
All of this is to say that I have positive and negative relationships with fandom... which leads me to the Spider-Man fandom. While I could apply this on a macro scale to just western "cape comic" fans in general, because Spider-Man is my favorite super hero, it should go without saying that I have a lot more experience with the Spider-Man fanbase... and how utterly horrible it is.
If you've only ever engaged with the movies, cartoons, and video games, and you don't bother with comic books because you, frankly, can't be arsed to read like, 1000+ comics about Peter Parker alone, I can totally understand. Lord knows that's a herculean task, and while you could theoretically jump in wherever, it's still daunting nonetheless. I'd actually implore you to, in fact, never pick up a comic book. Ever. Or at the very least, stay the hell away from conversations about Spider-Man with diehard comic fans, cause unless you are in perfect sync with their ideals on how Spider-Man should be, you'll have to deal with a lot of backlash over a difference of opinion.
I was first exposed to the Wallcrawler when I was 5 at the birthday of my best friend at the time, via the PS1 video game. From there, I'd go on to play the game a ton when I got to rent it from a Blockbuster, and from there, the rest is history. I saw the first Raimi film when I was 7, and I read my first Spider-Man comic, the debut issue of the Scorpion, around the same time. From there, I'd go about reading as many comic books featuring the character as I could find. Mostly by reading pirated copies online when I was about 12, and it would take a long time, but I eventually had read everything available at the time.
I participated in long lost forum (like, I genuinely couldn't find them years later) discussions and the like whilst I read, and things were great. I was young, but I was enjoying myself. Sure, I'd not like everything people liked, but things were still mostly civil...
Then, One More Day happened, and all hell broke loose.
Everyone, and I do mean basically everyone, was losing their collective shit about it. Threads about how horrible it was, and posts about wanting to kill Joe Quesada were fucking everywhere. JMS was shit on, which is wild to think now, for something he ultimately was forced to do. It was a disaster, and it's hard to believe now that this was 18 Years Ago.
And I... well, I didn't care. I had just turned 13 when I had finally read One More Day... and I didn't really care about what happened. I mean, sure, the story is pretty bad, but I had read what I thought were worse Spider-Man comics before. But when I dared say as much in the forums and chats that were previously relatively civil... needless to say, I was treated pretty horribly.
I was called everything from a fake fan to other colorful things that I won't repeat cause, uh, yikes. I was told that I should end my life, and that I was unlovable... when I was 13 and not at all in a good place mentally... over my opinion of a fucking comic book. All because I didn't care that Spider-Man had his marriage annulled. All because I was fucking 13, and marriage was the last thing on my mind.
I stopped reading Spider-Man for a while after that. The mental strain I was put under from dozens of strangers treating me, a mentally ill 13 year old, like dirt over something I loved made reading it hurt too much.
Years later, I would pick up Spider-Man again, just after Superior Spider-Man had just wrapped up. I had been still enjoying the cartoons (sans Ultimate Spider-Man), games and movies up to that point for the most part, and decided to give reading the comics another shot with the new #1 of the relaunched Amazing Spider-Man.
The books weren't mind-blowing, but I was engaged at the time. I had also begun catching back up with things I had missed in my comic book sabbatical. I wasn't super impressed, but I was still engaged to a degree. I had jumped in more or less when they had introduced Silk, and I was like "oh hell yeah."
Cindy Moon was a character that instantly hooked me, because I loved the idea of a new Spider-Woman-esc character who had a unique dynamic with Peter. I am one of the people who didn't mind the whole "pheromones" thing, because I was invested in seeing where it would lead. I am a firm believer that nearly any idea in fiction, within reason, can result in a good story if the right writer was involved...
And then it went nowhere.
I tried to resume my general view of things, and I was met with pushback. I had stopped letting people really get to me as much, and would argue against the people who would act like I was less of a fan for not liking the traditional MJ/Peter dynamic, and preferring the idea of the character going in a newer direction instead of trying to go back to a (now long gone) status quo. It didn't really have to be with Cindy, I just wanted things to progress in some way.
And then they didn't.
While stuff certainly happened, none of it beyond the initial hook of an idea really grabbed me. This is why I think Dan Slott is a good "ideas guy" but not the best writer when it came to executing on those ideas. Spider-Verse, for all of it's problems (and it has a lot of them), was overall solid, but what came after was mostly just kinda mediocre slop. And it didn't help that I had less than stellar interactions with Slott on Twitter (which, to be fair, were unpleasant cause I was pretty bitter with life at the time), so I was just burnt out by the end of 2016.
I was tired of the fandom bickering, I was tired of Marvel not progressing things, and I was just overall done with comics. I haven't really committed to reading much in the way of comics beyond the odd "I wonder what's going on right now" moods I get in sometimes. Marvel is a company that I could write a whole long as post about on their own. How the company, especially when it comes to Spider-Man, drags things through the mud, either because of unspoken malice for their fans, or just plain ineptitude. Things have just been miserable for a long time when it came to Peter Parker in particular, and it would take more than pressing undo on OMD to fix that, but I digress.
I had actually planned on making a post going over the complaints people had about "too many Spider-People" and why I think the arguments they make are dumb. I would have gone on to talk about how the real issue is that Marvel's inept creative decisions have lead to characters being less interesting, and having less opportunities to find their place in the Spider-Man mythos. How even the big names like Miles Morales struggle to find an identity of their own outside of gimmicky bullshit. How they keep introducing new characters despite not really completely fleshing out the old ones.
And I opted against it in favor of this.
See, to this day, I still see Spider-Man fans complain. I see them constantly complain about things like how they keep blueballing them on the Peter/MJ relationship, the existence of Paul, the amount of Spider-People, the miserable way Marvel treats Peter... and much more. And barring the last point about the miserable writing for Peter (it's gotten ridiculous from what I've seen over the last 9 years, honestly), I think this is ridiculous.
Why? Simple: because they have a fix for their problem.
And what is that solution? Also pretty simple: STOP. BUYING. THE. COMICS.
Spider-Man fans biggest problem is that they are unable to just wash their hands of the comics, to just stop buying them. To actually vote with their wallets, and just not bother to support something they clearly don't like. I'd say they should then support things like the "new" Ultimate Spider-Man, where Peter is married to MJ and has 2 kids... but Marvel was always gonna end that book eventually. They always end those kinds of things eventually, because it takes focus away from the mainline book, which is what they want you to buy.
So the Spider-Man fanbase, despite being miserable and full of bickering and infighting over shit like whether or not Peter should get back with MJ or not, among other things, is still just sitting there and taking it, like good little sheeple. They continue to complain about a product, saying how shit it is, only to keep buying the product.
Fans don't want to accept that the Powers That Be over at the House of Ideas really just don't give a shit about what they want. Marvel doesn't care if you hate Paul, or want Peter and MJ to be married again, or if you hate how they treat Ben Reilly in recent years, to give an example of something removed from the OMD related shit. Marvel is going to keep doing it because enough people keep buying the books. And these fans don't want to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, they outgrew the book for now. They're unable to accept that they should take a step back, remove it from their pull-list for a while, and hope everyone else does the same.
But they won't. They won't do that. They'll keep buying a thing that makes them miserable, and they'll keep complaining before repeating the cycle like an insane ouroboros of self-sabotage. They won't just move on, knowing that the people in charge of Spider-Man won't bend the knee to them, and will instead just jingle keys in their faces for short term gains.
I gave up on the comics years ago because I realized they weren't really for me any more. I came to the conclusion that fans of the comics also negatively impact my ability to enjoy things, so I scarcely interact with the Spider-Man fandom... which I consider to be the most repulsive fandom I've ever had the displeasure of interacting with. And because I said that, they won't listen to me when I say they just need to let go and stop supporting the books. Because they're a bunch of addicts for outrage. They chase the next high of hating Marvel instead of going out and just finding something else to read.
I feel like Miles has a gimmicky identity crisis in the comics
So I guess I'm writing this because I have Spider-Man brain worms that need to be dealt with. I know this post is likely going to have a bunch of dipsticks coming at me for stupid reasons, and I just want to get this out of the way:
I like Miles Morales. I don't have an issue with him being Spider-Man. I just have an issue with how Marvel seems to not know what to fucking do with him.
With all of that out of the way, let me ramble for a bit under the cut.
I haven't really touched much int he way of comics for a long time, because I've grown to hate the way the mainstream western comics medium has been diluted by a bunch of whack, garbage writing. But I've been reading comics since I was little. I still read the odd indie book, and focus mostly on manga if I'm in the mood for a graphic novel, but I still think about my love of Spider-Man from time to time. This is more of an outside observer thing at this point.
I read Miles Morales Spider-Man comics for a while back when Miles was new, up until around 2017 or so. So I basically got the whole Bendis run, and I just... don't like it? I've since checked out some of the Cody Ziglar stuff, and while I think the overall writing is better, it's also the era that shows that Marvel has no fucking clue what to do with Miles, and I fucking hate that.
Ziglar has a bunch of respect from me because he put in some honest to god effort to give Miles unique members of his own Rogues Gallery. It's great Miles got to have some unique enemies that are exclusive to him. But in the same run, Miles has had a bunch of gimmick power ups and suits that just feel like marketing buzz bait, and not like they actually matter. And as I read some of the run for this, I couldn't help but ask a single question:
"Why are they making Miles more like Static?"
Specifically, Static's powers. They're amping up (pun intended) Miles' Venom Blasts to just full on Electric Energy Manipulation and Absorption, where he can just make things like "Venom Energy Swords" because reasons. I find this sorta weird, because they were originally more or less like Jessica Drew's Venom Blasts, where it's a limited form of bio-electric affect the human nervous system like a spider's venom, hence the name. Hell, in the Insomniac games, his Venom Powers are basically just below Static's powers. Next thing you know, Miles will be riding a fucking garbage can lid and shit.
As a huge fan of Static (like, Virgil Hawkins is my second favorite super hero of all time, right under Peter Parker's Spider-Man), I find this kind of treatment hella whack. Why? Because it makes him feel less like Spider-Man, and more like some weird hybrid of Spider-Man and Static. I can understand the reason this happened, but it still feels so weird to me.
He can also basically go Super Saiyan because reasons. He gets his own Iron Spider suit for reasons. He becomes a vampire for a while because reasons. He gets a Vibranium Suit from Wakanda because... reasons I guess?
I feel like Miles is the most blatant example of using gimmicks to try and fill out a character that the writers of the comics have been failing to try and make his own thing for a long time. At least in the comics.
While I have my issues with how they are handling Miles' Venom Powers in the Insomniac Games, and I think his current "Evolved" Suit is fuckass ugly, they at least tried to do something unique with his character. They kinda failed to make Miles super interesting, but they're trying, and I can appreciate the attempt. I like Miles having a thing for music, and him pursuing studies that lean into that love of music. I like that they can use him to showcase aspects of the culture of non-white people, such as the whole Bebop sidequest chain in Spider-Man 2. I just wish he had more... flaws? His life feels a little too easy, too much like he has a free pass, and that his struggles lack weight.
The Spider-Verse movies though? Nah, those are fire. Miles works because he feels like a well realized character. The only thing holding him back, in a way, is that he has yet to really have a true "solo" experience that we can see without some Spider-Verse stuff happening. I like him and Gwen in those movies (a lot of my issues with Miles can be handily stapled onto my issues with "Spider-Gwen" outside of the movies), because you can see effort being put in to make the characters feel distinct in a sea of Spiders, and I like that. I like that Miles has his street art thing, and is motivated to look into researching dimensional travel to see Gwen again. I like that he feels like he has a life, and that he's not just a weird, bland rip off of his predecessor in the movies. I hope we can see him outside of the context of dimension hopping stuff. I'm super excited to see how he plays off of his Earth-42 counterpart though.
I just wish Miles in the comics was interesting as a person. But it's hard for him to be interesting when the comics are pulling him in so many directions, but none of them reinforce the thing that everyone keeps saying: the comics are bad at making Miles feel like he's Spider-Man.
As I said before, Miles is Spider-Man, I have nothing wrong with that. But I will also say in the same breath that I think he needs his own identity when he's in the same world as a living Peter. In Spider-Man 2, I found it insanely goofy that he and Peter called each other Spider-Man. At least remove the hyphen from Miles' name if you're gonna do that, to make it less weird to read in the subtitles.
I think Miles would honestly do better if he didn't have to be Spider-Man, and could just be his own spider-themed hero. He wouldn't be competing for attention, and I think writers would honestly appreciate the idea of allowing him to do new things that wouldn't be allowed in a "Spider-Man" book.
Again, and I can't stress this enough, I don't have a problem with Miles being Spider-Man. But like how Gwen had to become "Ghost Spider" to not compete for the Spider-Woman label, which is a much less historically significant name to compete over, despite the history of other Spider-Women besides Jessica Drew existing (my favorite, for the record, is Julia Carpenter, who also had her own moniker prior to being made the current Madame Web), I think Miles kinda needs his own name. At least so the book isn't "Miles Morales: Spider-Man."
I know a lot of people are gonna read this, get offended that I dare say Miles should have his own name, and call me racist or something. They're gonna say I actually have problems with Miles being Spider-Man for some malicious reasons, when my issue is more that the writers don't really know how to make Miles his own character, regardless of if that character is a Spider-Man or some other moniker. I just feel that Miles having a non-Spider-Man moniker that isn't his real name would help create that mental divide from Peter's Spider-Man that is constantly looming over Miles like a storm cloud.
I genuinely think Miles is, at present, better than Peter (cause Peter's books for the past like... decade and change have been hot garbage), especially in terms of potential that is untapped. Legitimately, I just want to see the comics rise up and make Miles feel more interesting without him having to be drowned in gimmicks, relying too much on him teaming up with other Black Heroes (which feels a little tacky to me, with how often it happens these days).
This is a ramble, stream of consciousness thing. I might upload a draft of a Miles and Gwen centric fanfic I've been thinking about at some point in the near future, because I have ideas. To give a brief idea of what that is, it's a fanfic where Peter doesn't become Spider-Man, but Miles and Gwen are both bit, and have to navigate being heroes together from the jump. I just think it'd be neat. I wouldn't even consider writing that if I didn't like Miles, for the record. He'd be Spider-Man in that, just in case I need to, again, reiterate that I have 0 issues with him being Spider-Man.
You’re going down punk, just you FUCKNG WAIT!! You will learn that this fandom is far worse than you will ever want to know. We may seem soft and shy, but we’re just being NICE! We can be cold, cruel, mean, and make you suffer and wish you had never said what you said. We can send you into the farthest most empty reaches of the galaxy, summon demons to our disposal to make you suffer, and make you feel the feelings that we experience, and don’t fucking think for a single goddamn second that’s easy! The amount of emotions that would boil inside of you would literally kill you. So keep your motherfucking distance and we won’t hurt you, so stay the hell back, asshole. If you so much as insult us one more time, we will bring firey hell upon you and bitch slap you into oblivion. Your move, dildo.
You do realize a majority of the fandom are 20 somethings right? or at least in college. We can find you, kill you, and make it look like you killed yourself. Don’t try us :)
Shut up.
We can exorcise a demon from you faster than Dean and Sam, believe me you need it.
We can toss you into a supernova, never to be seen again, or banish you to the end of the universe where you would explode to create a new one.
We can murder you and destroy all evidence of you ever existing.
Basically- D-O-N-T-C-R-O-S-S-U-S
