okay but can we talk about the power of colour for mj’s narrative
across the home trilogy, mj typically appears in very muted tones. homecoming sees her in shades of grey that serve to separate her from the brighter saturation of her classmates. ffh introduces a range of soft hues as she opens up to the people around her, and we see a shift in the comfort with herself through the introduction of pattern in her clothing. by the time we come to nwh, these now bold patterns and contrasting colours show that, despite the sudden international (and often negative) attention, she is self-assured and resolute in her own convictions and relationship, no matter what others have to say
her final outfit is that iconic deep purple as a demonstration of her strength, passion and creativity. this final version of home!mj has blossomed into an incredible woman who is ready to take on the world and whatever it tries to throw her way. even at the very end, she believes she can overcome insurmountable odds that will fix the position they’ve been forced into
cut to bnd’s four year opening montage, where we glimpse mj at college losing colour: her first day at mit has her in a dark red which then fades to the final video wearing black. after her return to new york, she continues to wear only distinct blocks of black, white or grey. this mj is not unhappy or unsuccessful, but she doesn’t feel fully complete. her ‘withholding’ is evident in a more mature take on removing any and all pattern
mj’s sense of self is shattered when she learns about this different version of her life. where anyone would be forgiven for fits of rage and confusion, mj is remarkably understanding. she invites this near-stranger into her home, and we see her stripped back to a simple vest in pure white, associated with balance, clarity and hope. this is mj’s most vulnerable form
in our final glimpse on the rooftop, we see mj has begun to transition back to ‘her’ colour by wearing lavender—a colour that symbolises healing, peace, youth and nostalgia
bnd!mj may be a different person to home!mj, but she is no longer waiting. she knows why this feeling has haunted her all these years: a piece of her was stolen and she’ll be damned if she isn’t going to find a way to get it back
“The Spider-Man Fandom and Misogyny towards Felicia Hardy (Black Cat) & Mary Jane Watson”
a mini pseudo-essay on my thoughts under the cut
One of the most famous critiques of the Spider-Man fandom is their tendency to self insert into Peter, which I personally don’t mind as long as it doesn’t hinder analysis or cause misinformation. However, I must call out the blatant misogyny towards Felicia & MJ due to this. Let’s start with terminology. I often see Peter being described as someone who’s “bagged so many baddies” and turned into a womanizer, when the opposite is true in canon. This dehumanizes the women he’s been with under the guise of compliments and seeks to uplift the man, portraying women as a prize. Here, instead of celebrating and commenting on the mutual love, adoration, and desire these characters have for each other, Peter is praised and the women are sexual objects. I believe this is partially due to the fandom’s desire for these women in addition to themselves inserting into Peter. This allows them to “appreciate” these women through the lens of Peter Parker.
However, it just reduces women to their looks. It isn’t wrong to admire these women, but we need to be mindful of how we discuss relationships. are insulted and “called sluts”. MJ being with Paul is not a moral failure, MJ did not cheat on Peter, and MJ is allowed to have multiple relationships. Felicia is not a slut for sleeping with multiple men and women, she is simply a human being with desires. These things don’t diminish their value as human beings, their intellect and personalities, and they should not be reduced to their traits. Felicia is extremely smart, skilled, and capable, but these traits are never discussed in favor of her relationships. Stop dehumanizing women and equating them to their relationships. We need to accept women’s sexualities just as we do men’s. Next, the Madonna-Whore complex.
I mostly see this when these women are compared (and while I do acknowledge that they don’t exist in separate vacuums,I do condemn these comparisons). In the case of fel & mj people project the Madonna-Whore complex onto the characters, but only when comparing them side by side. Partially bc Felicia is more promiscuous than MJ who is perceived as a “girl/next-door” type of beauty, so when they’re put together, either trait is flanderized (despite them both being grown women & diff characters with diff personalities and sexualities etc). However when MJ is just with Peter, they’re able to sexualize her. She shifts from the “Madonna” to the “whore” (both in terms of their sexualization, how they project onto Peter & “bagging a baddie”, and also how her relationships with other men are viewed). However, this is ironic considering MJ is a supermodel and canonically is exuberant, popular, and was even a “party girl”. While some may argue that this was simply a cover up, I propose that these are not how I define MJ wholly. She still encompasses these traits alongside her “true self” even if they are not her end-all-be-all, and these character traits are a part of her history.
Additionally, MJ is a supermodel, which requires a certain sense of vanity and confidence. She’s successful, too. I bring these traits up to disprove the notion MJ is a “Madonna”. MJ is a well rounded character, she’s not a “girl-next-door” (not traditionally at least). Additionally, Felicia is not the “whore” who exists to tempt Peter from MJ. MJ even laughs at the notion of them being in competition. Felicia’s personality holds an air of promiscuity at times, but her morals and mission are not defined by that. They’re defined by her relationship with her father and his death rather than her feelings for Peter. She doesn’t exist to be a home wrecking Madonna, she is a vigilante in her own right, separate from Peter. She is caring and witty, not just flirty. Her thievery isn’t mindless and simply to seek thrills, it stems from her own relationships separate from Peter and her own worldviews. She’s a complex character in her own right, not to be defined completely by one set of similar traits she holds. Felicia and MJ condemn this themselves within comic books. And now to circle back to people that self insert into Peter.
Peter Parker has always been meant to be relatable, it’s one of his core traits since his inception, which is part of the reason why self-insertation isn’t an issue. However, misogyny is a huge issue and biases need to be unlearned. Felicia and MJ are not real characters, but women are real and women characters deserve to be treated equally and given the same grace as men. By viewing them as sexual objects for Peter, and therefore, oneself, these characters are treated unjustly. Peter Parker is a power fantasy for a large portion of this audience, but these characters are not real and they are not the audience’s partners. We need to stop viewing them as such. Felicia Hardy and Mary Jane Watson are complex and brilliant female characters who deserve to be seen and celebrated as such even past their relations to Peter Parker.
Saviors, Suffering, and Isolation in Across the Spiderverse
Something that really stuck with me from Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse was the theme of suffering inherent in the hero narrative (and specifically the spiderman narrative) and how we can perpetuate suffering in our justification of it.
In the intro to the movie, Gwen gives background into how she became Spiderwoman. She explains the traumatic experience of inadvertently causing her friend Peter’s death and says that because of this she can’t have friends. We see how this has caused her to further suffer, forcing a wedge between her and her band, her and her father, and her and Miles. She is obsessed with not letting a loved one suffer at her hands in the same way again. Furthermore, she is okay letting herself suffer through isolation as long as her loved ones are safe.
Then, we meet Miguel, Spider Man 2099, who fervently defends his and his organization’s behavior as making sure some suffering occurs in order to prevent larger suffering. Miguel took over a different dimension’s Miguel, allowing him to have a daughter and live a happy life. However, this dimension fell apart because he was an anomaly and caused that dimension’s timeline to not flow as it should. After this, he forms the Spider-society, which is intent on making sure that anomalies are taken care of and, more importantly, that canon events happen.
This is where the main conflict of the plot arises, as a canon event in the timeline is the death of the police captain, who in Miles’s universe happens to be his father. Miguel insists that Miles has to let his father die, and rages that Miles has already helped another Spiderman (Pavitr) avoid that fate. This is not a surprise to Miguel’s character; he is tormented by his attempts to lead a happy life and therefore believes that suffering is necessary.
However, what is striking is that all the spider-people seemingly stand by Miguel except Miles. The characters we know, namely Peter B Parker, Jessica Drew (Spiderwoman), and Gwen all support Miguel’s perspective. This seems wildly out of character for these individuals who we’ve seen be insistent on saving people if it is in their power to do so. But it is important to note that, besides Gwen, they’ve already suffered that canon event of the police captain dying. For them, that was a necessary trauma in their lives that allowed them to be who they are today. It is in a sense a passive justification. They did all they could, but the captain had to die. But for Miles (and Gwen), the death of the captain is something they’re being forced to allow or even facilitate. They have to make the active choice to let their captains, both their fathers, die. Miles is insistent that this is wrong, and that there is another way to live.
As a story centered on characters of colors (and minority characters given Gwen is implied to be trans in the movie), this can be seen as a message about how some communities or people of color treat suffering. That is, the belief in many minority communities like mine (Hmong) is that suffering is a necessary evil to endure for the good of everyone. They suffered, so their children must suffer as well. However, this mindset moves from a coping mechanism to harm when, upon finding no or a lack of suffering, we fabricate suffering onto others like us because we believe this is necessary for success. Instead of finding help, lifting one another up, leaning on each other, we lean into the suffering, the pain, and the isolation. We are unduly harsh to our children, or we don’t try to disrupt the unjust systems that harmed us, or we just let bad situations be.
The Spider Society may be a group of spider-people, but there is surprisingly little care being given to one another’s wellbeing. Instead, they all look at each other and empathize rather than offer real care. I understand rather than let’s understand together. The coldness of this community is made clear with how harshly Jessica treats Gwen when she screws up, with how cruelly Miguel treats Peter (”I’ve had enough of you”), and most humorously with the therapy scene where the therapist spiderman rudely remarks, “Let me guess your Uncle Ben died?” The spider-people are all heavily traumatized individuals, and instead of healing they’ve worked themselves into a web of control and fatalism. By accepting that suffering as inevitable, they create the suffering of Miles.
As a daughter of a refugee, I grew up hearing the message that suffering made us strong, that it allowed them to be successful. Children who didn’t suffer were spoiled and grew up to be ungrateful wastes to society. I heard stories in my LGBTQ+ community about how young queers take things for granted and don’t understand how hard it once was. And when I suffered myself, I felt a similar urge to say that this suffering made me a better person. And this is so hard to fight because if you acknowledge the suffering wasn’t needed, that means you shouldn’t have had to go through it, that it was unjustified, that it was a random cruelty of the universe. And that is a tough truth to accept, because that means it didn’t have to be that way. Uncle Ben didn’t have to die for Spiderman to live.
In order to let our stories continue, instead of repeating the past, as well as help our communities Across the Spiderverse asks us to let go of the suffering and the belief we needed it. It is not what makes us heroes. It is not what makes us good. Instead, like Miles and Gwen (by the end of the movie), our heroism is in our love and our loved ones, and in the belief that there is a better way.
Any chance you have seen and/or have thoughts on Across the Spider-Verse?
I literally just got back from Across the Spider-Verse and sat down at my computer, so this is about as fresh as a take as I can manage.
Short version: it's an astonishingly and relentlessly ambitious film that aims to outdo every other Spider-Man movie, every other multi-verse movie, and even its own first entry in the Miles Morales trilogy. And it succeeds.
Full spoilers below the cut. You have been warned.
The Visuals
Before I get into anything about the story, I want to first give full credit to the directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemo Powers, Justin K. Thompson, and the entire team at Sony Pictures Animation. If you saw the first Spider-Verse movie and aren't an animation nerd, you probably were impressed but didn't realize how revolutionary it was. I'll let Movies With Mikey explain the details, because it's easier if you can see what people are talking about:
When your first entry wins an Academy Award by thumbing your nose at Pixar, the reigning king of animation, and the principles of animation set down by the Nine Old Men, you have every right to sit back on your laurels.
For Across the Spider-Verse, the Sony Pictures Animation team clearly decided: fuck that. If the first film had wowed audiences by combining a half-dozen styles of animation on the screen at the same time, the second film would drown you in dozens and dozens of Spiders-Men and -Women (and -Animals) drawn in every style imaginable: Da Vinci's yellowing parchments and sketchy penicls, harsh cell-shading, punk rock collage art, 90s-style comic panels full of impossibly rippling muscles, crappy hand-drawn animation from the 1967 tv show, and then for a tip of the hat to Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the man who should have been Spider-Man - live action.
The backgrounds show the same love: from the off-set printing of Miles' world (my favorite detail is that you know that Miles gets sent to the wrong Earth when the color scheme shifts from purple to green), to the dripping painterly pastels of the Gweniverse, to the riotous greens and yellows of Mumbattan, to the clean Pixaresque light blooms of the Spider-Society's technological utopia (which looks a hell of a lot like something out of Brad Bird's dreams).
I am thoroughly in awe of the mentality behind the animation in this film, the absolute determination to challenge one's own limits and exceed one's past accomplishments.
The Story
If there is a single world that defines Across the Spider-Verse, it's "canon." The moment Miguel O'Hara uttered that word, my spidey-senses started tingling and I realized that Lord & Miller came to this film with a sermon. See, if there's one message from the first Spider-Verse movie it's that "anyone can be Spider-Man." But if there's two messages is that "you can't save everyone" - the idea that the thing that unites all Spiders-Folk from across the multiverse, it is a common understanding of loss, a tragic origin that drives each hero to impossible efforts to never let it happen again.
Across the Spider-Verse's message is: "why?" I cannot begin to explain the absolute vibranium balls it took to question not just a core premise of your previous movie, but one of the core premises of the entire multi-media multi-corporate franchise. And yet, Lord & Miller show nothing but confidence executing this turn.
FULL SPOILERS OF THE BIG TWIST AHEAD in 3:
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At the beginning of the film, which makes the brilliant move to start by telling Spider-Gwen's story since we already know Miles, we are introduced to Miguel O'Hara (the Spider-Man from 2099) as a badass who leads a secret organization dedicated to protecting the mutliverse...but who secretly is also here to protect "canon."
At the turning point of the film, when Miles is finally invited to join the Spider-Society, we are let in on a dark truth: the safety of the multiverse depends on the suffering of Spiders. Just as Uncle Ben must die, so must a gallant police captain - although almost subtextually, Spider-Gwen hints that so too must the Gwen Stacys who "fall for Spider-Man" - to keep Spider-Man emotionally isolated and solely dedicated to his mission of protecting New York. Trying to avert this lonely fate, to live a happier life, brings about the destruction of all that is.
Through an act of unabashed heroism in Mumbattan - saving the life of a gallant police captain and an innocent child - Miles has inadvertently endangered an entire universe. And unless he allows his own father, the gallant captain, to die as well - the same fate will befall his own. Miles, being a good son and a good person, refuses to accept this and takes on the entire Spider-Society to get home and save his father.
In the chase, we are let in on a second, dark truth: Miles wasn't invited to join the Spider-Society because he is one of the anomalies they hunt, because he was never supposed to be Spider-Man. (You see how this builds on both the speech from Miles' mom about not letting white society tell him he doesn't belong AND the message from the first film?) The Kingpin's collider experiments allowed an Alchemax spider to cross over from Earth-42 to Earth-1610...and as a result, Earth-42 never got a Spider-Man.
When Miles accidentally is sent to Earth-42 instead of his actual home, he learns what that meant. Without Spider-Man, Captain Jeff Davis (Brian Michael Bendis is a real mensch like 99% of the time, but man did he fuck up with that one) died instead of his brother Aaron. Because the intended Spider-Man of Earth-42 was...Miles Morales. Instead, he has become a dystopian Brooklyn's Prowler, a living reminder of the damage the accident of Earth-1610's Miles' creation has caused. This is why you don't violate "canon."
Except...as we learn, Miguel O'Hara is wrong and our Miles is right. When Gwen is sent back to her own universe, which she has been running away from because she knows that it means confronting both her father the gallant captain and the inevitability of his death, she learns that George Stacy quit the force rather than take his promotion: Captain Stacy doesn't have to die. Nor did Captain Singh. Nor does Captain Davis. (For that matter, Miles doesn't have to lie to his family and live a double life as Spider-Man, as we see from his accidentally-misdirected confession.)
We are not the prisoners of the "canon."
Ever since Amazing Fantasy #15, "with great power there must also come great responsibility" has been the indisputable truth of Spider-Man. At this point, it's become a meme: "the Parker luck." Over and over again, Peter Parker must suffer for our sins - Uncle Ben dies, Captain Stacy dies, Gwen Stacy's death ushers in a whole new era of comics and the phenomenon of "fridging," his marriage to Mary Jane has to be done away with because the Spider Office are apparently psychological eternal adolescents, Aunt May has died and almost died so many times everyone's stopped caring.
And that's the problem: we've been playing the same hit for 61 years and it's gotten old. In the process, creators and audience together have condemned Spider-Man to a Sisyphean existence of eternal backsliding, unable to move on, build a life for himself, mature, die and give way to new Spiders. Hell, the best thing that's happened to Peter Parker in the last several decades was an AU in which he has a super-powered wife and daughter and can settle into a middle age of teaching at the Xavier School.
That's the sermon that Lord & Miller came to preach: just as in 2018 it was time for a new Spider-Man, now it's time for new stories that have the courage to try something different.
A Side-Note About the Multiverse
As with the animation side of the story, Lord & Miller could have sat back on their laurels when it came to the concept of the multiverse. After all, they were the ones who made it cool and sent Marvel Studios scrambling to catch up (still haven't succeeded at that, by the way). I don't think Everything Everywhere All At Once needed the creative help, but it absolutely helped sell the movie to producers that a multiverse movie could make millions and win Oscars. (Funny how that works.) Instead, Lord & Miller took it up a notch by asking "what is the purpose of a multiverse?"
Hot take: I don't like the Spider-Verse events. For all that they've given us some amazing Spider designs - and we saw them all up on screen in Across the Spider-Verse - no one cares about the stories. That's because the naked purpose of the comics was to market test Spider designs, see which ones generated buzz, and then make spin-off comics about those Spiders.
Across the Spider-Verse uses the concept of a multiverse, the shiny Macguffin that multi-billion dollar corporate conglomerates will hope will the ticket to riches, to strip Spider-Man down to the essentials by showing every conceivable variation and asking us what they all have in common. Is it suffering, or a commitment to doing the right thing?
Conclusion:
Holy shit, is firing Lord & Miller the biggest mistake Disney has made since Walt refused to recognize the animators' union in 1941.
Oh shit. Felicia is derived from the name Felix, which means "luck". Of fucking course Felicia used and abused Peter. She was literally Spiderman's luck
Hi! Hope your year's going well. Sorry to burst into your inbox with questions but you seem like you'd know this: why is Spidey treated as the Quippy(TM) hero? Pretty much every Marvel hero quips during fights, as far as I know. But if they hear *him* quip suddenly they pretend like they're Serious and Can't Stand Smartass Comments During Fights At All? I get that whoever he's fighting/directing the comments at is supposed to hate it but why do his allies/friends also groan? Thanks in advance.
It's been a mixed bag so far, anon, but not without some good in it. And back atcha.
This is a thing because of a horrible, deeply stupid domino cascade. What happened was, in 1962 Spider-Man was very fun to read and people liked that. Immediately after this we have our first problem, where people tried to identify what was making it so fun and correctly concluded that a key component was that Peter talked a lot during fights and the way he did it.
Peter's comedic timing in classic comics is very strong, delivered in a way where you're inclined to credit the character and not just the writer, and is honestly the most regular indicator that you're dealing with a character who's supposed to be very intelligent - he comes up with witty (and often very mean) things to say about almost every situation without any apparent expenditure of effort.
This was identified as quips, which is not exactly what I would call what Peter does. What Peter does is patter - keeping up a running commentary that lets him control the rhythm of a fight. Patter follows the rhythm of a scene, where a quip acts like a brake interrupting a scene's momentum.
So far, this does not sound like a meaningful hill to die on. And it isn't. This is a nearly nonexistent bit of semantic fuzziness.
AND YET.
So now it's been like forty years and Spider-Man has a deserved reputation as an amusing character. Awareness of this has spread way beyond the field of people who actually have any reason or inclination to understand the finer ins and outs of Peter Parker's very distinct character voice. Everyone knows that what Spider-Man does is, he quips! That means he tells jokes! This is technically true, but paints an inaccurate image of Peter as someone who interrupts fights to make puns, fascinated by his own wiseassery to the point of distraction like a bird with a shiny object. This is now what the general public thinks he is like. This filters back from the general public into comics. I do not at this time know what specific releases you can point at to blame for this, but Marvel's (comic branch's) grip on Peter's voice started to get just a liiiiittle slippery here and there every once in a while in the mid-90's, as they expanded Spider-Man unsustainably beyond their three core titles, and One More Day (in 2007) basically put it in the ground.
Meanwhile, the MCU starts in 2008 with Iron Man, capturing the hearts of millions. They start building up their brand. The conviction that quips - actual quips - are key is cemented by Avengers in 2012, because everybody is besotted with the abrupt, self-fascinated, oddball way the MCU's interpretation of Tony Stark talks. As well as being amusing, this is strong character work that tells you a lot about Tony - his brain runs very fast, like Peter's, but also he's bad at connecting to people, bad at treating them with consideration in a conversation to the point of debilitation, and extremely uncomfortable expressing or receiving expressions of direct, sincere emotions. He interrupts people. He makes jokes no matter how dire the situation is as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Because he knows he's a genius, he remains convinced that he's funny regardless of whether his audience agrees.
His out-of-universe audience definitely agreed, though, and here we begin to lose the plot, again. The quippy speaking style gets shoveled around more generously in Avengers, the movie directed by the Buffyspeak guy, and is received with strong audience approval, and after that it defines the voice of the MCU. Even when that means deflating serious moments with jokes to the detriment of your film. This filters back down to the comics.
So now you've got this entire quip dimension, and an entire line of comics variably mimicking or sending up its style. And then you have Spider-Man, who everyone knows is The Quip Guy. Surely something about his quips sets him apart from everyone else quipping, since he has that reputation? No one can write this convincingly because it is not a real thing.
So that's how you get team titles that are just endless series of quips, with scenes where Spider-Man shows up to make a quip of the exact same tone and quality and then everyone around him suddenly acts like they have never heard a quip in their life, and also hate jokes and being funny. Because something has to be different about his joke style, right? It must be that there's too much of it, which is annoying? Time and place, Peter! Ha ha.
And I look at MCU Spider-Man, a character advertised as being funny because everyone knows Spider-Man is funny, who has been set up to stand out in a universe entirely populated by wiseasses who quip constantly by being written to deliver jokes with absolutely no intention behind them whatsoever, because he is stupid, because he is a teenager and clearly teens are innately stupid, and that's the joke. And I am inclined to agree: It's extremely fucking annoying.
Spiderflash Tangled au. Peter is Rapunzel, Flash is Flynn and Doc Oc is Gothel
Oh hmmm I'm replying in an effort to remember this and prevent the hellsite tungle from eating it.
But that does sound like a cute idea! And Aunt May and Uncle Ben are the king and queen searching for their lost nephew! This really does sound cute. I'll have to think on Flash fitting in as Flynn. I mean I get it lol (they're both Eugene, right?) But while he's got a high charisma and some (very underated) intelligence (in USM I'm given to understand Midtown high is a magnet school)
Not like explicit canon but I mean Harry Osborn is there instead of a private school or private tutor. And nearly everyone except for Flash and Sam are portrayed as being very intelligent. Poor Sam rip. But this isn't about Sam it's about Flash. So despite Flash being a bully and a jock he would still need to qualify every testing period in order to stay on the extracurricular teams. Even though I've literally never seen bullies behave like Flash (I was extensively bullied but never slammed into lockers, unsure if it's a bs gender thing or what tho) we can assume that he's really good at athletics and good enough at academics that faculty looks the other way when he bullies. If either of those weren't so I think it's fair to assume there would be more official action against Flash for his behavior. Academics because he's underperforming and being given 'special privilege' for attending track meets, football games, etc that likely get him partially out of classes (I'm basing this on Texas public schools, I have no idea how much transit time between fields has to be figured in NYC. I think Midtown is shown with both a full track field and a football field? So it's possible that instead other teams use their field to play on. If he wasn't outstanding in athletics he wouldn't be worth the coaches pressuring the rest of the faculty to look the other way.
But despite his charisma and his tactical cleverness (in sports and as agent venom) he's not especially cunning. Neither do I see him being rogue-ish.
Flynn is definitely rogue-ish, heck forget the -ish. He's literally a rogue. And he's cunning. There's a lot more to his character than that, but those are the biggest sticking points I see to having a Tangled AU with Flash as Flynn. I'll try and think on it to see what I manage to come up with but no promises.
YO so Uncle Aaron takes Miles down to his favorite spot to paint, and reminisces about being Miles’ age right? And we later find out that Kingpin’s collider is just behind the one wall right? SO it occurred to me maybe Uncle Aaron went down to that spot some years before to check if his art was still there and ran into Kingpin, and got offered a job? And we know that Miles gets bit by the spider in that room?? What if Uncle Aaron became Prowler and Miles became Spiderman IN THE SAME ROOM??
